


PREDATORY

by Romantic_Megatron



Category: Transformers, Transformers: Prime
Genre: AU, F/M, Genderbend, Multi, Other, Predacon, Predacon Megatron, Role Reversal
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-08
Updated: 2020-09-08
Packaged: 2021-03-06 21:01:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 27,038
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26355385
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Romantic_Megatron/pseuds/Romantic_Megatron
Summary: STARSCREAM IS the leader of the Decepticons. She's bold, energetic, persistent, and far from the type to let others tell her what to do. The only person who's ever gotten away with that was her archnemesis, Jetfire--a passionate ex-flame turned bitter rival, and warlord over the Autobots.MEGATRON IS Shockwave's pride and joy. He's the best of his rank among the Predacons, a race of cybernetically-engineered beings created from the fossils of ancient beasts designed to be the ultimate war machines. He's better, stronger, and smarter than all the rest, making him an invaluable mechanism of mass destruction.Now that Shockwave and his experiments are back on Cybertron's second moon, the well-kept hiding place of the Decepticons' main fortress, Starscream is faced with a predicament. Every one of Shockwave's predacons is a specimen to behold, mostly perfect in discipline and conduct, but one stands out from the rest--the apathetic, smug, and self-absorbed Megatron.Starscream isn't the type to let others tell her what to do. And Megatron isn't the type to take no for an answer.
Relationships: Megatron/Starscream
Comments: 2
Kudos: 17





	1. Chapter 1

Starscream stormed out of the throne room. The tips of her claws left the edge of the door purposefully, letting it slide closed behind her, drawing the cautious eyes of antsy cadets and watchful guards. They followed the glowing blue ember of her cheeks and the telltale twitch of her wings.

It wasn't a new sight. Her jaw clenched firmly, plated knuckles moon white, optic ridges furrowed into a metal canyon at her brow: she said nothing, but the click of her sharp heels on the cold floor spoke volumes more, and her acutely pursed lips sang with shivery breath. It wasn't surprising or unordinary to see Starscream angry.

That two-timing scrap heap, she thought. The picturesque tapestry of Jetfire's commanding gaze and the mocking assuredness of his patronizing smile burned craters into the back of her optics. There was something salacious about the way he reveled in her frustration, chuckling self-importantly at her irrational outbursts, lusting after her indignity. He took a troubling gratification in seeing her struggle. It was narcissistic. Suggestive. Only he had that kind of control over her, and he knew it.

There were two types of lust, Starscream believed: the kind you felt for a friend or acquaintance, and the kind you felt for an enemy. One was shameful, but passive and impersonal. The other was more than just pleasure. It involved draining every ounce of energy from your body, working your hydraulics until they popped and left you feeling sickened with aches and immobile. It was a feeling that consumed you either until the recipient died, or you did. It was a necessary part of the never-ending cycle of abuse—the psychosexual, biological need to go back to someone you despised fervently with every gear in your being. That was the competition part of love. And for every time Jetfire tried to objectify the pressure of leadership, danced along in their masochistic ritual, pursued her adamantly and unendingly through the trials of time, she pushed back. It was just typical that she was the one who ended up cornered.

"Get me some energon, stat!" she shouted to the first vehicon who caught her attention. "Primus knows I need some... 'me-time.'"

His reddish visor lit up and he nodded with feverish glee. Accepting her unceremonious announcement, it was off he went, like a bot possessed by some spirit of servitude, pedes clanking dissonantly on the polished metal floor. Starscream grabbed the edge of a resting bench and sat herself down with a grace and theatrical allure only she could muster. She swung her legs back and stretched her dainty wrists. She got looks. She was used to looks. She loved the looks.

Starscream's wings splayed out on either side of her chassis. Her back arched like a cougaraider's, clawed digits scraping deep gauges into the flimsy metal, chest poised upward, hips down, heels kneading. The conservative ensemble of her vehicons ogled as she shut her optics tight and puffed out a breathy sigh, exhaling a tired, quaky moan. Helms turned shamefully at her subtle immodesty. Cooped up on a ship with mostly mechs, Starscream reveled in her control: both formally, through the political implications of her granted superiority, and personally, via the unspoken laws that governed the depravity of a planet strongarmed into modesty. On Cybertron, it was unthinkable to concede with a mech who wasn't your conjux—purity was the incontestable rule, and it was accepted, entirely too eagerly, that to even think of swapping fuel with someone you couldn't bind your spark to was horrifying. Starscream didn't hold much stake in this ideology. That was something Jetfire had always hated her for, her unabashed sensuality and confidence.

She finally collapsed onto the bench, dramatically draping her narrow limbs across the edges of the metal slab. The eager cadet raced back to accost her. He waited until she had extended her servo to deposit the small blue cube, a tiny tessera of energy that bashfully glowed and pulsed. Starscream tapped her claws on the thin, glassy shell, and raised it to her lips.

Just when her dentas collided with the shimmering crystal, the sudden sound of a door opening was married with the unmistakable bark of her designation: "Starscream!"

The energon's shell popped prematurely in her mouth. She sputtered as the thick liquid bubbled into her throat and splattered her chest. Coughing and blushing the color of a sparkling sapphire from helm to heel, she whipped her ireful gaze around to see who had startled her, wings shooting up like angered sentinels.

Starscream saw red. Not in the figurative sense, but literally—a bright, flashy burst of crimson metal, wrapped around the crescent bust of a mech with sharp eyes and a cutting smile.

"What is it?" Starscream demanded. Knockout tried his best to seem unaffected, but the effort clearly fell short, and his diligent eye kept darting back to the scandalous heart of energon on her chest. He cleverly disguised the beginnings of a chuckle as a tangle in his throat.

"My liege," he poured. "I... hate to interrupt, but it's important. Shockwave has successfully transported everything he needs to the moon lab. He's just waiting on you now."

"He won't have to wait any longer," Starscream promptly replied. She puffed out her chest to look at the bright spot and scowled, getting up and trotting alongside the stout medic. She flared her wings up like a curtain of privacy.

Knockout didn't need permission to start leading the way. Polite enough to halt his teasing until further embarrassment could be avoided, he waited until the door to the hall had shut firmly behind them before he started to snicker crudely, flashing his judgmental optics back on her mistake. "How clumsy," he taunted. "Having trouble swallowing, are you?"

She snapped impatiently: "Zip it. You did that on purpose."

"Did not! It was an innocent mistake."

"You're disgusting." Starscream scowled. She wiped a balled servo across her chin and sucked the smeared energon off of her digits.

"You're one to talk." He stuck his lip out like he was appalled at her. "Go ahead—lick it off, you dirty fuel-guzzler."

"I'm sure Breakdown would lick it off for me if I asked," she shot back, baring her dentas in a wry smirk.

Knockout didn't seem to have a retort for her. His clever smile disappeared, fading into a bothered frown. He looked forward again as she gathered the rest of the spilled energon in her palm and scooped it up towards her mouth, slowly and sultrily licking it from each one of her pointed digits.

***

Shockwave was impressed. Soundwave's attention to detail never failed to astound him—the temperature, the terrain, the fauna, the light level, all were perfectly tuned to create a stunningly lifelike biosphere, only made unbelievable by the fact that its shimmering, hexagonal walls contained it within a 2 klik-wide radius. Beneath a forcefield dome that stretched high into the sky, a small patch of the barren moon had been terraformed to include an arching metal mountain, a gulping rust lake, and a field of reddish dust, so attentively crafted that it was near indistinguishable from illustrations of ancient Cybertronian land. It was like looking into a cyber-paleontologist's paintings.

Everything from the dim, reddish light that shone down from concealed spotlights high above, to the smell of ancient ferns and their placid spores pervading the moist air, made Shockwave feel like he was back on an older, healthier Cybertron, something long lost to time. He turned away from the gaping glass window looking into the massive enclosure, and back to the dark, cavelike mess of wires and whirring machines he called his familiarity. Veins of energon pumped across the metal walls like an overly thoughtful Spiderbot's web. Attached to the massive enclosure was a much more traditional structure, a close copy of his research lab back on Cybertron, only newer, and considerably less destroyed by rogue Autobot forces. The walls were lined with built-in shelves stock full of rare cybernetic material and strange, menacing tools.

Shockwave was more than just a general. Long ago, he'd been the senator of Praxus, a mech well-respected by his peers in the upper echelons of Cybertronian society for being a foundry of bold ideas and extensive knowledge. The scientific community sang him constant praise for work that was unprecedented, funding experiments and participating in procedures that nobody else would dare to even consider. He was legendary. But below the surface of his calmly intellectual demeanor, he harbored a damning secret... well, in truth it was little more than a lie by omission, but that didn't make it any less critically faulting.

Shockwave was more than an eccentric biotechnical engineer. His strongest passions and most monumental achievements all skirted on unethical—CNA reconstruction, genetic rearrangement, cross-creature splicing, all practices renowned for their novelty, cruelty, and phenomenally low success rates. Most saw such procedures as highly inappropriate, but Shockwave didn't feel that way.

The downfall of most Cybertronian researchers was that they saw science as a collection of complex principles. In reality, it only needed one—progress. There was so much information, so many groundbreaking discoveries that remained cruelly gatekept behind the suffocating rules of ethics and morality, prioritizing the comforts of a minimal few over the benefit of many. Puritan review boards gave less than a thought to studies that would revolutionize technology and the body because they required more than a delicate probing of willful participants. What of real science? What of the spirit of experimentation? There was no importance to truth, no priority for advancement and hard data, only flimsy utilitarian concepts that crumbled like poorly preserved paintings in too strong of a light. It was all garbage. Shockwave was just the first mech with the confidence to admit it.

Regardless, his downfall came from something duly adjacent. The nail that finally did him in was indecent conduct of an entirely different variety. Lesser mistakes coagulated into something monstrous which swiftly cost him his social status, sending him caterwauling down a pit of depression and suffering, forced to resign from the high life of prestige and promise to the rank depths of someone scorned and forgotten. Those were the most miserable years of his life. His time at the bottom shaped him, and when Starscream finally extended her aid, he was a completely different mech to the mildly unorthodox senator his dearest ex-cohorts had once known.

Speaking of Starscream, it was as if his thoughts had summoned her, because he soon heard the warm ding! of the decontamination chamber's activation system springing to life. He turned his cyclopsed head and stared at the door. Entry to his lab was barricaded by two levels: first, a sanitation process designed to remove all foreign bacteria and particles, then subsequently, a stabilization chamber which equalized the air pressure to reaffirm homeostasis. Each hallmark was signaled by a different set of sounds, so he knew how close a new guest was to arriving. He stood up a bit straighter when the final door opened, pouring cold steam into the already frigid and humid room, and out from the glaring white lights stepped the titular winged Starscream.

She was just as Shockwave remembered her. Narrow face, slim waist, wide hips, long legs—she looked less like a femme-bot than she did some scandalous sleaze's artistic rendition of one, the classically sexy seeker pin-up who gazed wantingly down at you from the top of your desk. All she was missing was that naively bawdy smile. She crossed her arms over her chest and surveyed the room (she was intentionally avoiding eye contact with him, already making it clear that she would tolerate no further interaction than what was strictly required), making a note of what trinkets and collectibles sat on the shelves, though hardly absorbing any of it. Shockwave knew better than to speak before spoken to.

"This place looked lived in already," she interrupted the silence. "How is it treating you?"

"Very fairly." If he could have smiled, he would have at that moment. This was as friendly and unthreatening as he could be. To Starscream, he looked the same as he always did—uncomfortably attentive.

"It looks a lot like your old laboratory." She kicked something that had been discarded on the pristine floor, walking confidently towards him. "And by that, I mean it looks hideous. Aren't there any other colors you like? Seriously, you could have picked anything in the world besides this dreadful green."

The energon that coursed through the walls was tinted by embedded yellow lights. Shockwave had always reckoned the grimy lime glow suited his personality. Pretending he hadn't heard her, he guided her attention away from the dark and dismal room: "Indeed, it does. It's probably even better than my old lab. Soundwave is fantastic."

"It's always 'Soundwave' this, 'Soundwave' that with you." She groaned. "You know, it wasn't like he built this by hand. You fawn on him so hard."

"I can identify the work of a mathematical and technical genius from miles away. Soundwave is one of a rare few."

"Again!" Starscream threw her hands up. "I was the one who told him to get this built for you! He just oversaw it! He didn't lift a single digit getting this thing constructed. If anything, I had more to do with getting it done than he did." She stared at him dead on, arms crossed impatiently, clearly waiting for something. The expression of his singular optic didn't change.

"Soundwave's design for the enclosure is phenomenal," he finally spoke after a long, excruciating pause. "It's far better than the Predacon habitats I made back on Cybertron. Much more accurate and much more intuitive. I've never felt more at home."

Starscream pursed her lips tightly together to hold back a string of choice words.

Shockwave turned away from her and walked towards the window. She took the time that his boring gaze had left to swallow her prickling jealousy and clasp her servos behind her back.

Shockwave was an oddball to her. His face was utterly unreadable. He seemed socially inept, and on one-to-one conversation he could put even the most insufferable of bots to sleep; but in spite of this, she found his lack of attention infuriating, and couldn't help but feel belittled when he ignored her. Someone like him ought to feel humbled by her attention. The vehicons were always reliable like that. Still, though, she knew what he was here for—their business with eachother was strictly professional, and there were far more interesting creatures than a washed-up former senator waiting just beyond that sealed enclosure door.

"You wanted to show me the Predacons?" she ventured.

From somewhere inside the habitat, she heard a shrill, beastly shriek.

***

The enclosure was far bigger inside than it looked.

Starscream, upon entering, was struck by a surprising realization—somehow, in spite of every known principle of their existence working against it, amidst the thick jungle undergrowth and the jagged terrain, she couldn't spot a single predacon.

Shockwave had insisted there were six of them. Six! She considered the possibility that she had been duped, because of all the half a dozen of those beasts, not a single tail, claw, or wing made itself known to her, as if they had dematerialized into the earth from whence they'd came. She felt deceived. Just as she was ready to turn to Shockwave and call him a delusional liar, to scold him for wasting her valuable time with such elaborate fakeries, something spontaneously erupted from the foliage in front of them, causing Starscream to shriek with fear and stagger backwards. She tripped over a protruding stick and landed on her aft in a patch of billowy leaves.

Something large and arrow-shaped sprung up into the sky, only feet away from where they'd just been stood. It had a soft yellow underbelly and fiery red armor. Two canopied wings shot forth like a paraglider from under the creature's ribs, snatching the artificial sunlight away into their bowed clutches, casting a translucent film of shadow over the two mechs. Starscream gazed up in awe. Not paying much thought or mind to them, majestic and mindlessly beautiful as it was, the predacon soared higher and higher until it reached equilibrium and coasted across an invisible current of wind. Starscream didn't even care that she'd been embarrassed. She was awestruck.

"There's Nexus," Shockwave said, with a tone of pride that was foreign. "Isn't he beautiful?"

Starscream felt the ground start to shake beneath her. She leapt back to her feet, hastily stretching out her arms to control her balance. "Moonquake—" she cried, optics wide with terror. She reached for Shockwave's arm and clung to it frightfully. He was steady like a rock.

While she quivered like a windswept leaf, another predacon's cry pierced past her audits, this time from somewhere far off to the left of her. Just like before, a giant kite-like figure burst out from the overgrown foliage and exploded into the sky, scattering green and black light all over the forest floor. It soared through the sky with wings that cut like knives. "Onyx," Shockwave said matter-of-factly. "Look at him. Such a beautiful specimen."

A third, shriller cry sang out from even farther away. The third specimen burst free of its confines, shining more brightly and brilliantly than the sun. Shockwave's informative speech accompanied it, predictably: "There he is... the swift and elegant Quintus."

A smaller figure leapt up from a cave on the metal mountain, awash in the color of stone. "That's Micronus. He's the same size as you or I, but far, far stronger. Now, that only leaves..."

For the second time, the ground beneath them began to shake. Starscream looked around wildly for the source, her wings quivering even harder than the bushes and ferns surrounding her. She whirled around to face her opposite side when she heard the sound of madly rushing water behind her, and from the perturbed surface of the rust lake, she was met by a truly incredible sight—a fifth Predacon, with armor the color of deep, starry dusk, beat its massive wings and soared into the sky. Starscream couldn't help but stare after it.

"And that's Solus," Shockwave concluded. "Truly a Predacon worthy of royalty. I've always called her my Queen."

Starscream let go of him and stepped back to take in the sight of the scattered beasts. They circled around in the sky like gorgeous vultures, crying out to each other and coming to rest at new perches, disappearing like they had never been seen in the first place. They were a marvelous sight to behold.

"They are my most proud creation," Shockwave boasted. "I—"

"What about the last one?"

"What?"

Starscream was struck by an intrusive thought. "Those were only five Predacons. I was told there would be a sixth. Six Predacons." She held up her servos to make the point clearer. "Who's the sixth?"

She wasn't sure what sort of reaction she was expecting from him, but this wasn't it. His optic unfocused at her request and his posture stiffened. He looked like he'd just seen someone rise from the dead.

"Well?" she demanded.

"You're right," he finally snapped out of his trance. "There are six. But isn't that enough for today? You've gotten to enjoy five of them—that's more than enough."

"What are you talking about?" Starscream frowned. "If I was told I was going to see six Predacons, I want to see six Predacons."

"But it's been an awfully long day. Maybe we should put it off until—"

He made eye contact with her. Her optics were burning with curiosity, and there was a stubbornness in her face that he knew he wasn't going to be able to deny. He sighed heavily. He'd put himself in this situation, hadn't he?

"Alright..." Shockwave sighed nervously, turning his shoulders away from her so she couldn't see the rapid fiddling of his clawed hand's digits. "Come with me. I'll show you the sixth Predacon—you just have to make sure you listen to this advice very carefully."

"Advice?" She pricked her wings curiously. As much as she hated it when people on her team kept secrets, she held a special sort of pleasure in solving them. This was the most intently Shockwave would likely ever get her to pay attention to him.

"Make sure you do exactly what I say," he spoke slowly and comprehensibly. "No exceptions."


	2. Chapter 2

It looked like another feature of the terrain at first, a mound of jagged metal slabs all piled on top of one another to form an odd, if not distinct, resting perch. Starscream didn't see the figure of its head until they drew closer.

Shockwave had taken her through a trampled path in the overgrowth to the hindmost edge of the enclosure. A good seventy feet behind where they stood, Starscream sighted the shimmering wall of the forcefield, incrementally rippling and beaming with an aura of activity. Stood square in between her and the pulsing curtain, like some barrier of entry, was this big, ugly thing.

It was large. Quite large--it was two-thirds as tall as she was, not counting the razor-sharp spines on its back. Through the mass of metal she could make out a neck and chest, narrow back haunches, a barbed tail that curled around the legs like a bounding wire, and, perhaps most importantly, a pair of wings. They blanketed the creature's flanks and made its figure appear amorphous. 

"Is it dead?" Starscream whispered. The optics set on its bulky, herculean head were dark, and the rest of it was immobile.

"He is not." Shockwave seemed to have chosen his spot deliberately. There was a wide berth of space between the cyclopsed mech and his predacon. "He is perfectly fine. He is well fed. All his vitals are in order, and there is nothing otherwise irregular about him—he is just resting." 

"It looks dead." Starscream's lips curled back in a frown. She was a bit underwhelmed. The other Predacons had all blossomed out to her in their fantastic picture of strength and beauty, an exalting ceremony with flamboyant performers. They had all been wonderfully entertaining. That this one refused to introduce itself to her and just lay there, looking like a pile of scrap, was disappointing. 

"He," Shockwave corrected. "He is a male. Megatronus... takes some time to get used to new things. He's been like this ever since we arrived."

"What?! You mean this hunk of junk has just been sitting here like a bum for the past few days?!" 

Something groaned out from the mass of silver and teal. Starscream yelped and jumped back in surprise, startled by the sudden animation of the immense figure. Metal ground viciously against metal, screaming as if the act of movement for such a heavy, hulking beast was monumentous, like moving a mountain. The creature's front paws, once obscured, stretched far beyond its head.

The barbed tail lashed out. It was almost long enough to whip both of their ankles. Each of the armored segments on the Predacon's flank shifted independently, shimmering wings of large metal butterflies fluttering in tandem. The hinge of its jaw unlashed and it bared its formidable chops. Those dentas were bigger than Starscream's servos—the ones in the front were sharp and curved, for piecing, and the ones in the back, squat with disruptive surfaces, could easily crush her helm like it was nothing. The last thing she wanted to do was to get caught between those. 

Once all of his limbs had been freed, they hung suspended in the air, shivering from the force of the sluggish rumble that bloomed from his chest. His wings arched high into the sky and cast a bolstering shadow over them. Starscream anxiously watched from her spot behind Shockwave, head racing as she struggled to think of what the Predacon might do next: would it stand up and take off into the sky? Would it unleash a mighty roar that shook the ground beneath them? Would it spring on them and snap her up like a rust stick, devouring her swiftly and painlessly? Or would it hurt to be stabbed by those glistening canines, crushed to death and squeezed free of all the energon in her body? Would she have the time or energy to scream? Would anyone miss her? She flinched, staring wide-eyed at the beast as it sealed its jaws shut, freezing suddenly in its unraveled position, optics blinking to life. A meager grunt slipped from its tongue.

Then, with a heavy THUD! on the rocky earth, its legs and tail crashed to the ground again, wings settling back into a formation like crumpled paper. The bright light of the creature's optics died down once more. The dust slowly dissipated, leaving, again, the figure of a sleeping Predacon, almost unchanged if not for the fact its helm had shifted to lay on the left cheek this time, front pedes lazily raised. It once again became completely still. 

All that movement, all those theatrics and dramatics—it was just for a yawn. Starscream had cowered in fear from a slagging yawn.

"Are you KIDDING ME?!" Her trembling voice cracked and raised to a shriek. "Lazy pile of garbage! You stupid animal! You can't even be bothered to wake up for more than thirty seconds! Pathetic! You're a WASTE of GOOD ENERGY and LEG ROOM!!"

Shockwave grabbed her arm, trying to say something over her distraught shouting, but his words of caution were all drowned out. She shoved him off and stormed up to the beast. Its peaceful, settled breaths barely disturbed the girth of its gigantic chest, only resulting in the gentle quivering of its ventilation arches. Too lazy to even snore, she thought, face heating up until it burned to the touch. To say she felt insulted was an understatement. She'd treated this beast with the respect enough to fear it, starting at its grand awakening and awning at the way it moved, so powerfully and frighteningly, only to be ignored like her presence meant nothing. Less than nothing—it hadn't even cared enough to wake! It made her look like a sensitive fool! And now, even as she screamed her breath away at it, hot and blue and shaking like a leaf, it didn't even flinch! This bastard of a mech thought she was so laughable of a leader that it didn't even care to defend itself! How disrespectful and ignorant could someone get?!

"I HATE YOU!" her rage bubbled out in quaky splutters. She was right there, hovering directly over the ungrateful heap of scraps and bolts. He was still silent and motionless. Swept up by the heat of the moment, she balled her servos into fists and swung her leg back. Before it registered to any of them what was happening, her airborne ped shot forward and slammed, forcefully, into the predacon's exposed side.

The impact made an almost musical sound that pierced their audits and rang out into the air. It seemed like everything else went silent as the note gradually faded. It occurred to the passionate seeker what she had done only when she retracted, her ankle slightly throbbing from where the magnitude of the strike had jarred it. Everything seemed to go eerily still. The Predacon still did not move. 

"STARSCREAM!" Shockwave shouted at her. She spun around: she wasn't used to such forceful and commanding words from him, and coming from his chest they were especially cold. She felt like a sparkling caught in the middle of breaking something cherished and valuable. "I can't believe you. Get over here! NOW!"

She was too overwhelmed by the shock of her own actions to protest. Wings drooping low on her back, the proud femme shuffled away from the slumbering beast, servos wrung in shame. The words to justify herself escaped her.

"I thought it would... I..."

"You're lucky Megatronus is clever and disciplined! If he wasn't so well-tempered, he would have killed you for disrespecting him like that!"

Her mouth twitched. "Disrespecting him?! What about me? I was—"

"You insulted him ceaselessly and interrupted his rest. Most Predacons wouldn't tolerate impudence like that."

"He's not the one in charge here! I am! I make the rules! He's the one who should be respecting me by not being a lazy bum!"

"He will move when he wants to," Shockwave hissed. He spoke slowly, like he was trying to instruct a particularly hardy sparkling. Starscream's face flushed blue.

"When he—?! That's so unbelievably—"

"That is enough." Shockwave shut her up again with a stern and unwavering snarl. His optic was firm with frustration. "You are being illogical and unreasonable. I've told you several times now to be more polite, and at the very least to listen to my instructions, but you've done neither of those things. You've actively gone against everything I've advised. You are a danger to yourself and everyone else here. Now, if you would be so kind as to take me seriously for once in your life, I'm going to have to ask you to leave."

"Leave? But—"

"Megatronus needs to rest. He will wake up and be active for you when he is ready. But right now, you need to go. I will escort you out." 

Starscream blushed darkly and stared at the ground. She felt like she was young again, being scolded for her forwardness and impulsivity after making a dumb mistake. She felt like an idiot. He was probably right—as stupid as it was, she'd been way too thoughtless. What if that junkyard of a beast hadn't been sleeping? He could have easily chomped her head off. She had to reassure herself that this was the case. But as much as that seemed like the logical answer to everything, as much as it made sense that it was by pure chance that her tendency to act before thinking hadn't landed her in a predacon's stomach, she couldn't shake off the suspicion that there was something more to it. Like maybe the predacon really had been playing her for a fool, and she'd been right about his insolence, about the suspicion that he was more than he seemed. Like maybe he was trying to bait her. 

As she followed Shockwave's steady pedfalls, entirely too paranoid of falling behind and being left without a companion in this wild enclosure, Starscream turned her helm to glance back at the slumbering predacon. He was immobile. Peaceful. Careless, thoughtless, and, if his density was any implication, hopeless. Just what you'd expect from a brutish beast like that. 

Before she turned back away, she spotted the distinct glow of the Predacon's activated optics. They were trained on her.


	3. Chapter 3

"You're too slow," Starscream hissed, blunting her staff against the flat of Breakdown's back. He let out a sharp uff, stumbling forward and waving his arms, surprised by the amount of force that came from such a small and outwardly dainty seeker. She angled the weighted metal stick so the end was planted betwixt his shoulders, then popped it forward like she was hitting a bell, smiling as he lost his balance and toppled to the floor. The bigger they were, the harder they fell.

"I didn't think this was possible before you, but... you're too confident." Breakdown struggled to push himself up, panting incessantly to cool his overheated hydraulics. He managed to look up at her while she spoke. "You launch into things and don't consider the consequences because you think you'll be able to take whatever they throw at you. You think that as long as you tough it out and act like a tank, nothing can shake you. Well, I've got a newsflash for you, tough guy—there'll always be someone bigger, buffer, and stronger than you. And there will certainly always be someone cleverer than you. So if you still think you can punch your way out of any situation, you're gonna be in for a rude awakening when you get out there in the middle of a real fight and have to hold your ground against real Autobot goons."

"Yes, ma'am." Breakdown smiled awkwardly and finally heaved himself back to his pedes. In the darkness of the training room, only dusted by a smattering of red light from the thin, glowing trainer strips embedding the walls, his dark blue armor appeared as an unexpected royal purple, the hulking silhouette of his shoulders tinged light crimson. Gleaming bashfully, his optics set themselves to the ground. Breakdown was a tall and heavyset bruiser, every bit as clumsy as he was expansive. He was young, too; back when Starscream was still an air cadet, before this whole mess of a war, and even before her disagreement with Jetfire, Breakdown couldn't have been old enough to take an apprenticeship. He was probably fresh out of sparkling school when everything started going to the Pit, Starscream thought. This came with benefits and drawbacks—on one hand, being taught to serve a cause with no restraint had severely reduced his propensity for defiance, but on the contrary, it gave him a very one-dimensional mindset. Punch, hit, shoot, repeat... there was no nuance in his process of thought. 

Starscream had the advantage of learning everything she knew about combat during peacetime. She was taught how to be a commander as well as a soldier. She knew how to bring herself into a space where she could settle her nerves and think clearly, even in the most demanding situations. She could think fast enough on the battlefield to not only outmaneuver even the most vigorous attackers, but dig into their strategy, deconstructing every tick and habit to know what moves they'd make before they did. Starscream may have been comparatively small, but there was a reason she'd been queen of the Decepticons for this long.

"You're making progress. You used to go down in forty seconds, tops. Now you're pushing a minute." She playfully bumped his arm and grinned encouragingly. Breakdown had a naturally positive aura that was difficult to ignore. Starscream couldn't help but indulge him whenever he smiled and laughed to hide his embarrassment. If it were anyone else, she'd be beyond frustrated with the lack of real growth. He managed to leave her feeling only a little frustrated.

"Yeah... I think I'm starting to get the hang of it." He wasn't. "There's just no time to think..."

"You shouldn't need time. You just do it."

"My processor doesn't work that fast!"

"Of course it does, you idiot! You make split-second decisions all the time. If you've ever responded to a question, you've thought fast enough to parry a blow or connect a hit. You're perfectly capable of thinking on your pedes. The problem is that you choose not to."

"Can I try again, then? Just one more time." 

"Alright..."

Breakdown picked up his staff and Starscream readied hers. He furrowed his optic ridges like he was thinking extra hard. She took the courtesy to go first this time—he was down in in one minute and two seconds, precisely. 

Once he'd gotten up, she dropped her staff in his servos. "That's enough for today. Hang these up, will you?" Breakdown wrung his shoulders defeatedly and nodded.

Starscream took the opportunity to start her stretches. As much as she loved her leisure, she hated being called lazy. How could someone say that about her in good faith? She worked impossible hours, was constantly dealing with other people's problems, and made a dedicated effort to stay healthy and fit even on top of everything else... if she was truly lazy, would she be the one training with Breakdown instead of lounging about or handing it off to her second-in-command, Switchblade? Of course not! She was the only one who got anything done around here!

Speaking of Switchblade, she broke momentarily from her sky reach to ponder about him. Her second-in-command was a very predictable mech, and that's why she put him there. He never did anything offensive. He agreed just as much as was necessary, and he argued a very normal amount. He wasn't extraordinary in combat, or in wit, he wasn't too nice or too rude, he didn't have any unusual quirks that might have made him suspicious or obnoxious, and he was incredibly, painfully, simple—all the qualities that made a perfectly average first lieutenant. She wouldn't want anything else.

At this moment, he was probably doing something very unremarkable, like answering questions or listening to randoms' complaints. Maybe he was talking to Shockwave about the Predacons. That idea made her feel all huffy again. 

She reached down and extended her leg to resume her stretches. She still felt humiliated by what had happened earlier with that stupid hunk of metal. Shockwave couldn't have made her feel more insulted if he had straight up called her a fool! And now she was forbidden from going back, being ordered around by Shockwave of all people. He would no doubt be out there right now, telling everyone about her incompetence, making sure nobody ever forgot the time that she made an idiot out of herself by getting mad at a sleeping beast and proving that she was too emotionally unstable, too ignorant and illogical (she imagined those would be his exact words) to participate in higher-level discussion and decision making with her military inferiors. That smug bastard would make her into a joke! 

Starscream reached her arms up high above her head and moved her hips from side to side, relieving the tension in her ankles and stretching the compressors in her thighs. Breakdown finally came back from throwing up his weapons to stand behind her, patiently. She didn't even feel the need to turn her helm to address him.

"Say, Breakdown?"

"Yes, ma'am?"

"I don't ask a lot of questions about my underlings." She once again bent down to do a toe-touch stretch, wings standing up straight and quivering idly. Breakdown turned his gaze down to respectfully ignore her prominent... "lower half."

"You mean, like... interrogating questions?"

"No, not that. I'm talking about personal questions." She came back up very gracefully. Purring as she resolved a throbbing knot in her lower back, she proceeded with the lateral stretches. "Like, what are you thinking about? What does a day in your life look like? Who do you talk to? Those sorts of things." 

"Yeah. I get what you mean." He smiled patiently. She waited for him to break the silence a bit longer, then turned to him with a pointed look.

"Well?" Starscream demanded.

"Well what?"

"Are you going to say something or what?"

"You didn't command me to do anything..."

Starscream groaned and struggled to avoid hitting herself in the face. 

"You don't always need an order to justify doing something! It's not a crime to be forward!" 

"Sorry, ma'am."

"Don't apologize! You're not—" She seemed like she had something she wanted to say, but she struggled to find the words, and gave up shortly after. "Fine! I command you to tell me about yourself. How is that?"

"Oh! You wanted me to make conversation!"

Starscream looked at him with an expression that was purely poisonous. He smiled sheepishly and winced. 

"Yeah... um... right. Uh... what do you want to know?"

Starscream exhaled painfully and turned her focus back to stretching. She was suddenly reminded why she never asked things about her compatriots. This was going to be excruciating. "Anything. What are you up to? Who's fun to hang out with? Who isn't? What sort of things do you like?"

"Well, I like training with you."

"But that's less than an hour out of your day! What else do you do??"

"Yeah... you're right. Uh, usually I do what Switchblade or Soundwave tells me to do, since they usually need me for something."

"And when they don't?"

"Lately, when they don't need me for anything and I want to make myself busy, I go to help at the medbay."

"There we go. That's something." She pulled her left leg up by the ankle and bent herself backwards. He smiled at what he perceived to be words of encouragement. 

"I figured that since I'm already down there so often with wounds and stuff, I might as well start pitching in to help out. I always felt bad going in for treatment all the time and adding more work to somebody else's plate. It just felt right to help out."

"And are you sure that's the only reason?" 

Breakdown blinked. The blue of his armor crept into his face. 

"Well... uh..."

"Spit it out."

"I... I don't mind spending time with Knockout. He's nice."

Starscream scoffed. "'Nice?' Give me a break. He's the most insufferable glitch I've ever met. He doesn't have a single nice thing to say about anybody."

"Well, he's nice to me." Breakdown sounded embarrassed. His heavy servos had tangled together into knots by the time Starscream quit her stretches to look at him again. 

"Do keep telling yourself that, honey." She didn't want to make him upset, in spite of the scathing reputation she had among her peers. "But if you're sure you want to keep believing, you can be my guest. Just don't be surprised when he uses you for something, or starts saying things about you behind your back. Believe me when I say that I wouldn't want that for anyone."

"Yes, ma'am."

"Good job," Starscream cooed. "If that's all you have to say, then you can be dismissed. I have other things I need to worry about, anyway."

He left her alone in the training room after that. It was rather quiet now. Feigning interest in the idle discussion had given her time to think, particularly about what she was planning to do with Shockwave and his Predacon situation. She still couldn't get that blasted beast off her mind. When she'd started walking away, it looked at her—it had looked straight at her! She'd considered the possibility that it was just her processor playing tricks on her, feeding into her paranoia, but that seemed too distinct. You could hallucinate the flash of optics turning on just at a fleeting glance, but not an entire helm lifting from the ground to point directly at you, especially not when it had been angled away from her moments prior. The Predacon hadn't been sleeping. That was impossible. It wasn't possible unless she was right, unless the brutish beast wasn't as stupid as it seemed to be, and that it was only feigning to be asleep for the express purpose of making her out to be a fool. That seemed like the only possible explanation.

But who would believe her about that? Certainly not Shockwave. He was already so convinced that he knew everything about them. It would take aeons to prove anything to him, even when she was confident that she was right. And if he was assured in his wrongness, everyone else would be too, no matter how much she demanded or ordered. She wasn't stupid, once again contrary to popular belief. She knew respect and legitimacy had to be earned, not instructed. For that reason, she knew there would be only one way to get the others to believe her... and that was to get her proof.


	4. Chapter 4

Everything was quiet. Absolutely quiet.

It was ironic that Starscream was made to feel like a fugitive on her own moon base. She snuck around carefully to the door of the laboratory, scaling the modest fortress of a building with her optics. She was far away from the familiar, noisy clutter of the docked Nemesis, where troops coagulated in narrow veins like a persistent clot to pumping tubes of energon. The ceaseless activity, the shuddering of electricity, and the livelihood of the ship was all like a spark's beating, unyielding as it pulsed. It was something that was vital to their survival, but litigated itself to little more than a drone, a metronomic activity that plagued the subconscious. Without that steady beat, what was she? The noise and business was just as vital as a spark's energetic throbbing. The vibrations of conversation shook her chest until she reached equilibrium. Without them, she felt strangely amiss, bracing for the impact of a world unfamiliar and yet unseen. The place beneath the forcefield felt like that to her. Foreign. Unknowable.

The door opened for her. She stepped inside. The decontamination chamber smelled strongly like casual-use disinfectant and general staleness. Its walls were a stark gray. Starscream's armor was doused in a quick blow of stinging steam from the ventilation grates in the walls; the particles clung to her, lingering until they became heavy with the moisture in the air and sank down the sides of her legs, trickling into drains on the floor. Another puff of wet air swept away the toxic smell.

Starscream thought it was kind of funny that she had to be clean and pristine to enter Shockwave's lab. When the door to the chamber opened, she was overridden by the pungent stench pervading his rancid quarters. This place was filthy. Formaldehyde, rust, crusted energon, dust and grime—that mech seemed to attract those heavy, intrusive odors. It was absolutely disgusting in here. She breezed past his tables full of datapads and tools, finding herself at the touchpad lock that led to the enclosure. She placed her palm on the servo scanner.

BEEP. 

Her face became awash in a red glow. The scanner flashed with warning, causing her to jerk her digits back, pursing her lips in surprise until bright white text interrupted the plain surface: UNAUTHORIZED PERSON. ACCESS DENIED. She wasn't expecting to be rejected, so she couldn't help but stare.

"Oh, that little glitch," she snarled. How insulting! He'd put in the extra time to have his doors locked, specifically for her... on her own moon base, no less! "I gave you this door, you moron! How dare you!"

For most mechs, this would be the end of their exploration; after all, if a door was programmed specifically to keep someone out, one would be safe to assume it was pretty effective at doing that job. Starscream wasn't most mechs. After such a blatant act of disrespect, she couldn't just call it quits—not after he'd affronted her charity like that! 

She started to look around the laboratory, scouring through bundles of mess and waste. She didn't expect Shockwave would have the forethought to carry his failsafe around with him, as that would indicate a level of practical intelligence she deemed absent given the pitiful state of this room. It was only after grabbing a small stool to stand on so she could reach the top of a particularly tall shelf that she finally found what she was looking for, a small, card-like structure, fashioned of nearly weightless metal and centered by a blue light. She grinned enthusiastically and snatched it up in her greedy claws.

When she pressed her ID chip against the servo scanner, it gushed out a comfortable green light and sprung open immediately. Wetness and earth replaced the stench of musty darkness. Empowered by her triumph in the face of adversity, the seeker queen stepped into the enclosure for the second time. It was liberatingly humid. 

A thought crossed Starscream's mind. It came as she was traveling through the viscous undergrowth, separating it with her servos to make way for the berth of her hips. There were Predacons afoot in this overgrown cage: beastly things, minding their own business in the way that wild animals did, until their rabid eyes set sight on her like perverse electric tripwires, springing to life their claws and frightening jaws. The memory of her previous experience was burned into consciousness. There was something uniquely terrifying about a beast so massive and mysterious exploding out of the ground like the head of a sprout, especially when it paid so little heed or mind to her presence. There was no consideration of her on their behalf, not as a friend, or even an enemy. It wasn't necessarily the threat of them devouring or attacking her that left Starscream feeling a twinge of unease—it was, rather, the possibility of being trampled, discarded, or accidentally broken, with what casualness those monumental beasts could throw her away like trash if she ceased to amuse them, or ended up in their way by fateful chance. What if she stepped on one's tail by accident? One of those could flatten her in seconds, with barely more than a flick of the rare appendage. She was so fragile compared to them.

Like the sudden burst of dawn, a loud scream erupted from the dome's horizon. A shadow passed over Starscream's helm. She turned her body away and her helm towards it frightfully, only to stare as the massive figure of a beast in flight eclipsed the starry sky, swerving to and fro in the air. It was gorgeous. Was it Onyx? Quintus? Solus? She didn't remember, and she doubted that it mattered; the only thing she was certain about was that it wasn't Megatronus. The body was too narrow and the wings were too short. 

Megatronus. Something about the thought of him made her energon boil. Who in their right mind would name a beast after the traitorous fallen Prime? Especially a beast held in such high regard. When she thought of the name "Megatronus," Starscream's head swam with visions of evil, greed, cowardice, and weakness. The fool who was scorned by his brother, the monster that murdered his lover. In all honesty, Shockwave should have expected trouble when he gave him a designation like that. It was a self-fulfilling prophecy. 

But at the same time that she was disgusted, she couldn't help but feel... intrigued. It was fascinating to her. It was fascinating in the same way Jetfire's horribly disrespectful behavior was fascinating: when Starscream couldn't get what she wanted, it filled her mind and fixated her thoughts, until she could figure out a way to either quell the unpleasant desires or resolve them through force. Judging by the way she thought of Jetfire, "getting over it" rarely worked.

The shimmering forcefield was fast approaching in the distance. At its foot, Megatronus’ stout, collapsed figure came into view, sticking out rudely on the level surface. She reckoned he hadn't moved since she'd last seen him.

"Well, well, well," she spoke, raising her voice to catch the beached warwhale's attention. "Look who's still just sitting here. Like a heap of junk metal."

He didn't respond. Predictably. Somewhat self-conscious, Starscream cleared her throat and stepped a little closer, just to make sure that she was addressing the right pile of trash (she stayed a good 20 yards away from the slumbering Predacon, so it was a bit hard to make out the details). She had judged accurately.

"...Well," she continued. She wasn't sure what she'd expected from him, but in hindsight, she probably should have come already anticipating silence. "Are you listening to me?? Hello! Shockwave isn't here, so if you could... like, move..." 

Nothing. The pale metal surface of Starscream's faceplate grew hot and burned the color of energon. 

Struck by the futility of her actions, Starscream groaned. "What am I doing?" Her pedes led her in a whirlwind of frenzied steps around the hill. "I'm talking to a Predacon! It probably can't even understand me! Shockwave was right. I'm a slagging idiot..." 

She stormed down the hill, huffing and puffing to herself.

"I can't believe this. I wasted all this time coming out here just to yell at a stupid beast. I'm such an idiot." 

Usually, Starscream was unshakable. She was both an unstoppable force and an immovable object, and her determination had helped her out of more than a few sticky situations (both metaphorically and literally). The inability to be wrong was a vital quality of a leader, Starscream believed, and she would go to great lengths to prove herself right. If the evidence didn't line up in her favor, she'd force it to. 

But here, alone, with nobody to make an example out of, no one to argue with or assert herself over, Starscream was a very different femme. She did have doubts. She had lots of doubts, doubts that were constantly amplified by the patronizing, stern-voiced and firm-faced mechs of this cruel galaxy. When she was alone, she had nobody to stand up like a blank slate, to paint with a picture of the pearly Seeker she'd once thought herself to love, to use as a target or a stepping stone. The walls of emptiness were unscalable. She fell to her knees on the ground below her, finding that her legs were unsuitable. Somehow, the new perspective of the sleeping Predacon made her feel a bit at ease. 

"You probably think I'm terrible. You think I'm an emotional wreck and a total pushover. If you even think anything of me at all. You're probably dreaming about something stupid, like eating... you're probably really enjoying yourself right now. Primus, this is hopeless. And when Shockwave finds out, he's going to run off and tell everyone and then I'll look like a... a..."

Coo.

Starscream's loose, exhausted body was suddenly gripped with stiffness. A strange and melodious sound exhaled from the Predacon. Seized by surprise which fed gleefully into fear, she turned her helm, excruciatingly slowly, towards it.

An optic was trained on her. She almost jumped away as she saw it, the unmissable red glow of a large orb on the Predacon's face. His helm was tipped over on its side, snout pointed perpendicular to her, only faintly stirring as his mandibles parted to relieve the last seconds of that prolonged sound.

"Aah! What the—you beast—!"

She didn't know what to say. She wasn't even sure what emotion she was feeling right now. After she realized that the creature still wasn't moving, and most likely wasn't intending to leap at her so it could grind her up into dust with those powerful back dentas, she cleared her throat and lowered her servos from the defensive position at her chest.

"Oh... you're awake..?"

It let out another musical grumble. The gaping optic seemed to follow her face as she moved. It was utterly unblinking. He wasn't overridden with the blurry glare of someone who was just aroused from slumber, either; his optic was as clear as day, like... like he'd been awake this entire time.

"Ahaha... I knew it! I knew you were faking it! Stupid animal! You thought you could trick me, didn't you! Well, I've caught you now. So you can... uh..."

In all honesty, she had no idea where to go from that. 

"...Oh, forget it." Starscream slumped back down again. "What difference does it make? All this does is confirm that you think so lowly of me that you'd go out of your way to make me look like an embarrassment. It's barely a step above ignorance. But hey, at least you know I exist... Primes, I'd love to just shoot myself right now."

Starscream's wings flayed out at her sides and she fell to the ground, stretched out on her back. The earth below her was covered in scrap. "Go ahead. Eat me if you want." She was being dramatic, of course, but that was what she did best. She stretched her servos far above her head and clasped them together. They came to rest behind her helm. "I'm done with this. I wish I had it easy, like you do. I mean, look at you! You do nothing but sleep and eat all day, and everyone loves you for it. You don't care about anything or follow anyone's rules. And look at me... self-conscious, self-absorbed, constantly overthinking, never respected. You've probably gotten more sleep in the past few days than I have in a week. Not a care in the world... I envy you, beast."

Starscream felt a puff of hot breath on her face. Surprised, she looked over. The creature had moved its helm again, poised with its muzzle centered on her like a rifle's scope, nostrils flared curiously. Something about the inquisitive expression etched between its optics begged apprehending, so Starscream (hesitatingly) extended her arm, settling her servo on his muzzle. It startled her once again with a warm purr.

"Are you... trying to get... pets?" She slowly inquired. "Like... pets, pets? Head-rubs? Like you're a cybercat?"

It gave the slightest turn of its head, as if confirming her mostly self-directed question.

"Well, I... that seems absolutely... oh, well, I guess..." Starscream listed off thoughts as they patrolled her processor. It didn't take long until she was a bundled mess of concept threads and she surrendered with a sigh. "Oh, damn it. What do I have to lose, right?" 

Megatronus' optics seemed to get brighter as she returned her palm to his wrinkled snout. Oddly, the motion of petting it was relieving. The vibrations from the creature's throat were soothing, like a light servo massage. She moved to the top of the head. It rumbled with anticipation. 

Starscream was baffled, yet amused. She playfully remarked: "you're just like a pet. A pointy, overgrown pet..."

She slid her digits down along the pinched edge of his jaw, scratching his chin. He seemed to like that. In response, he stretched his neck out, encouraging her to travel lower, edging on his nape. She followed naturally. The warm vibrations continued to soothe her, and she crawled further, further, further, until...

Skriiiiit.

Her servo stopped moving. The closely aligned plates of his ridged underbelly were suddenly disturbed by a large and cold metal slab. That didn't seem like it belonged there. She mapped the unnaturally smooth surface with her palm, discovering that it was some sort of curved steel band. She grabbed Megatron's snout and pushed it up so she could get a good look at it.

It was... a collar. Three segments of a metal necklace hugged the Predacon's neck so tightly that they split his plated scales. Instead of a tag, the little ring at the bottom hooked onto a chain, snaking between his paws and around a tiny loop on the ground. She hadn't even noticed it before. 

"Oh. Oh wow." Starscream appraised it with an expression of shock. "I was joking about the pet thing. What in the..." 

She patted his chest. Then his legs. She found two more bands licking his ankles, hitched fast to the ground below. He grunted poignantly. 

"He chained you up," the seeker queen spat incredulously. "That's why you haven't moved, isn't it? It's because you can't!"

Another grunt from his rackety chest poured up into the stale air. 

"Wow... who would have thought? I can't believe I didn't see it earlier. Oh, what a little glitch!" Starscream's processor was racing. It was almost possible to hear the rapid whirring of gears and the shuddering of hydraulics in her pretty little helm. "What was that idiot thinking? Of course you wouldn't be able to get anything done like this! You can barely even look up at me! Now I almost feel bad for you... you poor hunk of junk! I'd hate to be shackled like that! Well..." 

Starscream paced in a tight circle. She looked down at him again. Megatronus hadn't taken his gaze off her. She couldn't help but imagine a semblance of humanity in those wide, gloomy optics: it was almost as if he were listening to her, or, even more bizarre, as if he could understand the gravity of the situation, and was trying, however futilely, to send out a personal S.O.S. Was this not animal cruelty? His primitive little beast brain was probably in throes. If my creator had done something like this to me, Starscream thought, I'd be upset, too. She wouldn't dare admit it for fear of sounding insane, but from that small little glance, she almost empathized with him.

"You've been a good listener," Starscream announced. "You must be awfully uncomfortable in those. Here, I'll help you."

When she inched closer, the beast raised his head and maneuvered onto his side, exposing the areas where the braces plastered his body. The massive wings on his back peeled away to reveal his belly. This must have been what he wanted. Starscream grabbed the first cuff she could find and slid her narrow digits through the gaps in its perimeter, finally scaling an entryway wide enough to pop her claws into. As she did that, the metal band sprung open and clattered to the floor.

The second wrist was just as simple, as was the case with the third and fourth. She had to climb over the creature's back to reach the next few shackles, but they came apart with similar enthusiasm. Each time a new brace was removed, the Predacon flexed his newly freed limbs, bumping her with the circular momentum of his angular haunches. She could tell the feeling of freedom was exciting him. Just as she'd discovered it, Starscream finally returned to the thick, heavy collar securing his neck, which was far larger, and far tighter, than any of the others. Each link of its chain alone felt heavy enough to weigh her servos down into the ground.

However, as she started to feel her way around the smooth metal band, Starscream's slowed. She became more and more still until she was staring motionlessly at the tiny scratches around Megatronus' neck. Why had Shockwave chained him up in the first place? Of all the Predacons, why this one? Apart from being large and scuffed, Starscream couldn't see anything much different between this Predacon and the others: they all had two wings, four legs, one arrowhead snout, and a nasty set of dentas. Why one if not all? Was there something she ought to be worried about? 

She could feel the beast's intense glare targeting her own. Looking back at him, she was met directly with an expression of surprising urgency. Whatever had happened to him was enough to bring the unconquerable titan to desperation. When their optics met, she could feel the full weight of his mourning. They were both trapped souls, Starscream thought—him literally, chained up from helm to toe with a ceremonial outfit of shame, and her by something deeper than chains, beyond the world of physical restrictions and into the depths of her own spark. She saw herself in this alien beast, and she assumed, or maybe just hoped, that he might be thinking the same thing right now. Something about that odd little thought really made her feel less alone.

Starscream felt the thick collar slip through her servos and fall to the ground.


	5. Chapter 5

Something happened.

Before the metal ring had fully left her servos, even before she'd raised her optics back to the hulking Predacon, the anticipating former silence was pierced by a deafening shriek. Starscream didn't even have the time to stagger to safety.

What followed the ominous cry seemed to occur outside of time. Starscream seized up like she was surrounded by thick syrup. The shrill screaming sound had come from Megatronus—or, more specifically, from the vigorous grinding of his armored chest plates against one another. His crudely defined limbs deformed at their hinges and exhausted spiraling towers of steam. His clawed paws distended fantastically. 

Suddenly, the armor on his chest split open. The two halves of his hulking chassis receded to expose a bipedal figure, casting its menacing shadow over her. Starscream collapsed to the ground, finding herself unable to stay standing. 

The sensation was impossible to describe. Like a heavenly apparition emerging from within the moon itself, a mech was formed from the disjointed fractals of his beastly shell. Megatron's towering wings flew open and affixed themselves to his shoulders, falling like a tattered cape. The plated sections of his underbelly closed around his waist. Where the helplessly heavy Predacon had stood moments prior, there was suddenly a tall, broad-shouldered, and very stern-looking, mech. 

Starscream's optics were wide with horror. The reality of what had happened, by consequence of what she'd done, finally sank in. She was about to climb to her pedes and run when the impressive figure broke its stone stature to reach forward and grab her, holding her by the collar of her chestplate. His servos were massive. She was lifted off the ground with ease, raised higher, and then even higher, until her pedes no longer could stretch to touch the earth. She clawed at the unbreachable servo: it fastened to her like handcuffs. A gasp forced its way out of her throat. 

The mystery mech was now staring right at her. No, not just any mech; those optics, deep and gory red, were unchanged from her first sight. They were utterly unmistakable. This was Megatronus; it just wasn't the Megatronus she was used to. 

Even in this form, he had an intense aura. His denta were precisely sharpened and glistened dangerously. A blackened triplet of scars ran across his face. He was stronger than any mech she'd ever known, and even like this, something about his presence—maybe the combined fact of his size, power, and stature—made her absolutely petrified. She couldn't look away from those terrifying optics. 

As he held her, bearing down on her innocently fearful expression, he couldn't help but smile. The salaciously evil grin seized Starscream up with shivers. He brought her even closer. 

"Now tell me," Megatronus started to speak in a tone that was both aggressively gravelly and richly smooth. "Which of us is 'like a pet?'"

She squeaked fearfully at him. 

As immediately as he'd began, Megatronus suddenly freed her from his oppressive grasp. Starscream fell back to the ground, squarely on her aft, relishing in the ability to move again by skittering away like a frightened animal. She didn't stop to look back until she'd escaped his shadow.

Another shriek extended from Megatronus' belly, only this time, it escaped through his teeth. He broke into a slow walk, gradually easing into a full sprint. The ground shook beneath him. As he catapulted his frightful girth away from her, the massive wings exploded out from his shoulders, and just as dramatically as he'd transformed the first time, he returned, quite magnificently, to his beast mode. The dance was far more strikingly impressive than she could have ever imagined.

His glorious wings seemed like they could swallow the whole sky. Megatronus raised himself into the air, escaping into the atmosphere. Starscream's breath came out in shallow bursts as he circled like a vulture, slicing the cirrus clouds, and, eventually, disappearing below the horizon and into the dense foliage. The lingering sting of his shrieking roar didn't ever seem to fade.

***

Starscream's lips collided with the brittle ridge of the softly glowing cube.

Her entire body shivered when she felt it. The subtle disruption of her tightly closed jaws wrangled her free of inoffensive equilibrium, so she parted them slightly. Her entire body was gripped by coldness, the gnawing, anxious type. This always happened when she got nervous. 

She was used to this song and dance. Her denta were chattering too hard. It was impossible to get them to stay still long enough to sink into the thin, crispy shell. It peeved her, slightly. The smallest, quaintest interference could be enough to send her into fits, quaking like a dislodged plate of armor from a spaceship in hyperdrive. She was constantly anxious. To be okay, she needed complete control: the second her vice grip started slipping it felt like torture, the gnawing approach of a sudden and uncertain death. Why did she fear extinction to every unaccounted mistake? Why couldn't she handle rejection? Her plans being usurped, arrangements falling through, miscommunications ending tediously fragile connections—the sway of the pendulum battered her redundantly, indiscriminately, hoisting her up a peg only to knock her down two when the bell's end came ricocheting back. She was so anxious. But how could she be safe if she couldn't even keep her life under control?

Starscream bit down on the cube too hard. Liquid energy washed her throat, singing it with stinging sweetness. The viscous fluid poured out too quickly and bubbled through of her mouth, dribbling down her chin. She coughed and immediately felt nervous about it.

After swallowing the contents of the cube like it could stifle her yawning gut, Starscream crumbled the crisp shell between her digits, grinding it into a fine powder and letting it run through her palms. The tactile sensation didn't make her calm, but she would take anything if it filled the aching silence. Starscream sat betwixt her berth and the mirror, anchored to the plush chair that served as an accessory to her holoscreen. Since she'd left Shockwave's lab, she couldn't dare the thought of scrutiny. In this state, she would certainly dissolve on impact, or at the least lose herself to a sobbing, shivering mess. Though far from the safe haven she desperately craved, her quarters was a sturdy boat tethered to shore; even while she couldn't escape the aftershock of his rhythmic waves, at the very least, she could control when she would let Shockwave come barreling in to see her, and that would offer a small amount of precious delay. It was a temporary comfort... if only she could wait out the scheduled storm as a weathered captain could, settled humbly in his dinghy, listening to the world's faithful metronome. Nothing was quite so faithful out here as it was back on Cybertron, where you could read the patterns of the rust sea by listening to the vibrations beneath your pedes. Or maybe it was. Starscream was never good with being faithful. 

And Megatronus... she shivered violently. Starscream's processor was fully alight with anxious dialogue, but all the words that kissed her glossa with their bitter aftertastes were distractions nestled into distractions, keeping at bay the real fixation of the hour. His name pierced her from a thousand different directions. She'd escaped his presence a long time ago, but in the same way, his presence had never truly left. He lingered in the whispers that polluted her audits and the vile sensation prickling on her palms. She still felt as weightless as she had when he'd picked her up and as heavy as she had when he dropped her. Since when had a Predacon been able to do that? Shockwave hadn't said anything about transformation... in fact, he hadn't said anything at all.

This was possibly the worst part. The idea that Starscream had made an error so monumental nobody had even thought to warn her—due to its impossibility—was not an outcome she liked to entertain. Additionally, there was a feeling of uncertainty blanketing the whole situation. In the recesses of her spark, a tiny, malignant knot of doubt pushed up against the caverns of her chest, purring chillingly up through her diaphragm and whispering through the thrumming of her stasis. What if she was a liar? What if she was making things up? What if she hadn't seen what her optics so clearly described, such a perfect portrait in her mind's eye? It was ridiculous, but when she was this afraid, everything became suspect, including—and especially—her senses. Had she seen the body of a mech unfurl from that wretched beast? Or was she spiraling into insanity to justify the fact she'd freed a creature capable of wiping out the entire moon base with a puff of scalding breath?

Was she losing her mind?

Was she—

Ding!

A shrill song whistled out from the door to her room. She jumped and nearly fell out of her seat.

The little red light in the center of the keypad blinked on, attracting her attention. The tips of Starscream's wings were still quivering uncontrollably. The light flashed again, and then a tinny voice whined: "My Queen, your presence was requested. Are you busy?"

She sighed with relief. It's just Switchblade. His flat, inoffensive, but still inquisitive voice accosted her, forcing a winded grunt from her chest.

"Give me a moment," she shouted at the intercom. Her claws danced on the holoscreen touchpad. "I'm redressing my armor. You can stand to give a femme her privacy, can't you?"

"Of course, my liege." The light flickered off. It was a bold-faced lie, but she knew it would get Switchblade to shut up—when faced with anything more stimulating than a personal conversation, he shed all nuance and quivered dumbly around like a rotted-out engine. He was square and inoffensive like that. 

It was hopeless to try to outrun her mistake. Shockwave would figure out eventually, and he'd surely have a meltdown (why go through the effort of containing him in the first place if he foresaw his escape? When things didn't go his way, Shockwave metamorphosed into a blubbering mess), and there was nothing Starscream could do other than face the music. It was no good to stay afraid of someone like that. Besides, she could always lie about it, couldn't she? If nobody had seen it, nobody would be able to pin the incident on her. After all, if a Seeker Queen accidentally freed a dangerous Predacon from his shackles and nobody was around to see it, did it ever even happen? 

Forcing an apprehensive smile to ease her nerves, Starscream sighed and stood up. The quivering of her wings would betray her in a spark's pulse, so she straightened them out and then poised them so they licked the arch of her shoulders. For as impulsive as she was, she was scared. She was terrified of consequences and of judgment. The repercussions of her actions chased her like a vengeful phantom. But if she could withstand the relentless weathering of Jetfire's prideful storm, or the incessant clamoring of her own tortured mind, then certainly, she could face another confrontation. She would live, just like she always did.

But even so, as she walked towards the door, she couldn't help but fill the impending silence with unmistakable recalled echoes of that Predacon's deep, gravelly voice.


	6. Chapter 6

THUNK. Wind washed in between the cracks of his armor. A shrill hiss exited the pit of his empty stomach, shaking off flakes of rust as the segments of his plated belly butted cantankerously together. His claws tightened up into balled fists, wrists still sore from where unwieldy shackles had indiscriminately suffocated his limbs. 

THUNK. His tail whipped about wildly. It felt like each individual segment of his spine was rattling separately as the dull air threaded between his ribs. It was refreshingly cold. Before he'd longed for the sting of vapor in his optics and the battered breath against his arched flank, because, in some way, it represented his freedom—when he took to the sky, all memory of servitude was planted like a seed in the earth, reaching its clawed roots between every crevice in the soft soil, but always coming woefully short of the towering sky, distant and untouchable for as long as his wings still bore the energy to carry his monumental weight. He'd expected the rush of freedom to be intoxicating. 

KA-THUNK. Every time his wings moved he could feel the socket around his joints being ground into. His massive frame creaked and groaned involuntarily with each new movement. He'd expected the air to bring him a sense of escape from the serpent's coil, but something was wrong—maybe it was something about this place, or this time of day, or any number of things, but suddenly, being high above the ground and free of the gaping vines didn't seem to change anything. He was still locked in a cage.

KA-HISSSS. Metal shrieking drowned out the whistle of the wind as he fought with his wings against the current of air, struggling to cull his rapid momentum. His gargantuan weight came to a stop in mid-flight, hovering slightly closer to the landing position in his sight, an approaching ledge buried beneath the canopy visible only from above. When his wings came in contact with the foliage, their serrated edges sliced twigs off their branches and lifted shuttering metal leaves into the air. Like he was seceding in battle, Megatronus finally dropped onto the ledge and shook the ground with his weight. 

Soon, there was silence again. He folded his wings and listened for something, anything to give evidence of life and shatter the gruesome silence. There was nothing. He wasn't a free mech, roaming the wondrous expanses of a prehistoric jungle he'd been ripped from so unceremoniously: he was an avianoid subject in a cage, which was deader, even, than the countless ranks of his brethren he'd slaughtered to get to this point, the precious gift of survival. The silence... he hated the silence. Nothing made him feel more alone.

Earlier that day, he'd been trapped. His body was burdened with heavy chains and drowned with exhaustion. All he'd done for the past many days was recharge, refusing energon or any form of upkeep. In complete honesty, he'd been contented to die there, in that spot—it wasn't like he believed he could, as Shockwave would stop at nothing short of sacrificing himself to keep Megatronus clinging to that last shred of vivacity, but putting his life on the line wasn't something unfamiliar or foreign. He'd expected to refuse his own care until freedom was begrudgingly awarded, like a prize, as if it was something he had to earn. But then something unexpected happened.

He hadn't planned for the femme. He was a sharp listener, and he'd heard murmurings of a controlling warlord with big expectations and an even bigger ego, but nobody had mentioned that she was a creature with a smoothly clarion voice and a little button sneer, whose dainty pedes danced when she walked. She was far from what he'd expected. Her waist was pinched and her heart-shaped chest perked up invitingly, and her hips were wide and berthy and the way her legs went on made his gut feel tight. He liked the feeling of her palms on him, and every twitch of her sharp little claws was so deliberate. As she stood before him he'd had thoughts of rubbing his cheek between her thighs. 

She wasn't what he'd grown to expect from a femme. Classifiers like "mech" and "femme" meant so little to him, as primitive as he may have been—as the formidable Solus was evidence of enough, both were equally treacherous in battle, and specificities of referral melted away under pressure so all that remained in the wasteland of she's, he's, and they's was an enemy. That much was still true outside the culture of predacons, but of course, he'd heard stories. In the caverns of his fractured memory he could recall "normal" cybertronians and their binary behavior. "Femme" was mystifying and illustrious, like some sort of rare artifact. They were objects of the purest kind of beauty and vessels of the truest, most potent form of lust. The way mechs described femmes was incredible and captivating.

He'd had shameful dreams of discovering something like that. His mind filled in the gaps and wandered. But his fantastical illusions fell short of comprehending reality, and she captivated him for that reason—not because she was more beautiful or delicate, or anything like that, but in fact, the very opposite. Her body was soft and inviting, but not plush or comfortable. Before that day he'd never seen someone of her stature before, but now the intricacies of her silhouette clouded his mind. Her stance was firm and confident, but still cautious, recoiling momentarily with each loud noise and stir. Her face was sharp, but something about her smile was intoxicating. And from the offset he'd had half a mind to be irritated by her voice, reaching such high notes and seemingly far divorced from the seductive feminine drawls his mind's eye had conjured, but even that, too, was uniquely bewitching. 

She was far from the fiction and schmaltz of femmes. She could have been a mech or she could have been neither, but something about her would still seize his processor. Maybe that was the true allure of a cybertronian femme: the magic, the mystery, and the impossibility, sirens to a race already damned. 

And besides all of that, ignoring the suspicion and desire, she'd given him one thing that nobody else had.

She'd given him freedom.

Megatronus had grown so accustomed to being ordered around, talked at, and otherwise ignored, that it left him stunned when somebody struck up a conversation, no matter how one-sided. In her strange Cybetronian way, the femme had invited discussion with him, and even though he hadn't said a word, he felt, oddly, like she was listening.

It was the most seen he'd felt for as long as he'd been here, a slave to Shockwave's care, monitored to the point of exhaustion in everything from his energon intake to his emissive waste. For everything Shockwave knew about the intricate details of his health, he didn't know anything about him. 

Megatronus hadn't felt free flying high in the sky because he'd never known freedom in the first place. Before, his wings had been the gateway to salvation, but now they were as good as clipped. The gleeful illusion had lost its boyish luster. He'd lost his wings, sure—but in the fall, he'd gained his legs, and his cunning wit, and his voice.

Megatronus knew what he had to do to find his freedom.

***

Shockwave was tense, for some reason. Normally, being in his lab evoked comfortable feelings: the hum of energon bubbling through plump arteries refreshed his old spark, and the sickish glow entombing his closed quarters made him feel easy. Indeed, nothing seemed amiss when his patrolling singular optic swept the premises; but yet, in spite of this, he couldn't help but feel... well... wrong. 

Something certainly felt amiss. Everything in his lab contributed to the energy, and when even one of those careful fragments was disturbed, it sent everything into a spiral. But what? How could his sense of balance be so wrong when nothing interrupted the diligent scope of his optics? His helm and his spark sang two completely different sentiments, and perhaps that was what threw him into uncertainty.

As he shrugged the uncomfortable tingling from his already nauseous helm, the sanitation chamber alert dinged behind him. Shockwave turned his helm. From the curtain of steam that poured out of its yawning cavern, out from the glowing pod stepped Switchblade. Starscream's second-in-command was a bulky, but not brutish, mech, with a firm stature and a poised, but not dominant, air. His chest was triangular and gave way for folded wings appointed to his shoulders to fan out, making him appear taller than he was. He and Starscream were similar in some ways, but different in many critical ones—namely, that Switchblade was rational and easygoing, a price he paid for in lost assertiveness. He could carry out orders easily enough, but it was no secret that he left it up to Starscream to make the major decisions, and wouldn't do so much as imply a question of her. He was simple, Shockwave thought. He didn't add any unnecessary complication and did as much as he was asked, and nothing much more. 

"Ah. Welcome, Switchblade," Shockwave greeted him courteously. "I appreciate your interest in this project. You know I would love to communicate about it with leadership, but it is... certainly preferable to speak with someone who can handle themselves. Don't you think?" 

"Indeed." Switchblade nodded with the obedient vigor of someone who would have said yes to anything. Shockwave had already known the answer before asking—he didn't.

"Very well. I would love to show you the progress I have made, and discuss with you about accommodations for Megatronus. You are aware that I have been requesting special treatment for him, correct?"

"I am. Soundwave has it all accounted for."

"Perfect. I can always rely on him." If he could have smiled, he would. "Such a diligent worker, indeed?"

"Very much so. But about the Predacons."

"Of course. They are adapting very well. Most of them are enjoying the privacy and keep to themselves. Solus is taking up the dominant spot in lieu of Megatronus' sedation—but that is about expected. She is certainly squadron leader material."

"Those two are very impressive. Are you planning to breed them?"

"It's a bit more complex than that. I would love to, certainly. The two of them are fantastic and I have no doubt that they would produce capable offspring. However, they don't seem to care for eachother much... Megatronus especially."

"Really?" Switchblade cocked his head curiously.

"He treats her just like he treats the other mechs, which is fantastic in battle, but bad for diplomacy. While the others are capable of working together under duress and even seem to have a sense of unity with one another, Megatronus is very hostile. He doesn't respect other alphas as his equals, and Solus doesn't mesh well with that. I would hope that he'd be a little more gentle with femmes, but he's entirely indiscriminate."

"I hope it isn't some sort of defect, sir."

"Oh, it doesn't concern me. Whether or not he fancies femmes is hardly an issue—either can bear a sparkling, and it will still be his sparkling, so I know they will be powerful. It would be a bit disappointing not to have a sparkling between him and Solus, but I could always facilitate it myself. My concern is that he won't find one he does want to mate with. He's so standoffish and cruel that I worry he'll never settle, and if one of the others does express interest, he'll hurt them, or worse. I wouldn't want that."

"I suppose not." An edge of impatience crept into Switchblade's stance as he angled himself onto the hilt of his pede. "Shouldn't we get to the point? I thought you were supposed to show me the predacon. I mean, I was promised a wellness check. We can't be losing track of them."

"Of course." Shockwave had a habit of rambling, so it was good to be brought back down every once in a while. He appreciated the guidance.

"You can go ahead first. I'll lock everything else behind us, and guide you along the way."

"Excellent. And by the way, I'd recommend not leaving your failsafe chip laying around. That seems pretty hazardous."

"What?" Shockwave focused his optic intently as Switchblade raised the small, card-like metal device off of one of his tables. "That's odd. Very odd. I remember putting it up on a shelf somewhere."

"You probably left it by mistake. Regardless, you're lucky I found it before someone else did."

"Very much so." Not dwelling on the thought, Shockwave took the slip from him and opened the door to the lab, making extra sure to stash it away on the shelf again this time.


	7. Chapter 7

Shockwave looked pale.

It wasn't like the color of his armor could change, but something about him seemed drained. The light from his optic leaked its typical scarlet hue and exuded a sick, pallid aura. The way his shoulders hunched forward shrouded the latter half of his torso in shadow, which may have added to the unusual feeling. Disregarding particulars, that was the first impression Starscream got when she saw him. He was pale.

Soundwave was next to him. There was nothing out of the ordinary about his featureless screen. But Switchblade, who looked characteristically on Shockwave's opposite end and stole shrewd glances at the wall, suggested a wealth of unaddressed disease. Starscream had a premonition, but nobody had given her so much as a stern breath, so she could continue to mask the pit of fear that hollowed her chassis. Her wings twitched wantonly, but nobody seemed to notice.

"My liege," Switchblade finally managed to speak, addressing her. She turned her helm quickly and appointed it to him, but he did not return her gaze. This made her face flush with anxiety. "Forgive us for disturbing you, but we have some... ah..."

Shockwave finally got his bearings enough to interrupt. "There's been a bit of an error." He even sounded pale, as if something had sucked the timbre and tonality out of his speech. It edged on a hoarse whisper.

Starscream didn't like the serious looks on their faces, but in her studious assessment of their demeanor, she'd noticed something unusual. They seemed... frightened. Of her? Instead of being accusatory like she'd expected, they were timid and shy, dodging around her pointed stare like it could spear them through their optics if they dared meet. Was it possible that they were afraid... of her?

An icy shot of courage washed across her spark. "What do you mean? Spit it out." Her optic ridges furrowed. She tried to hide it, but the way they flinched made her want to do a happy little dance.

"It's about the Predacons." They looked like they were about to collapse. 

"What about them?" 

"I don't know how it happened."

A spew of explanations suddenly purged the Cyclops mech's angular chest. They exited his lips one after the other and blended together with odd strings of gibberish, decorating her like a sash of pristine, fanciful word vomit. 

"Surely, it seemed impossible."

"I had every last variable accounted for, all carefully controlled..."

"But somewhere along the line, my diligence must have faltered..."

"I can't say when or how—it's still a shock to me."

"I lost my wits somewhere..."

"I didn't account for enough possibility, and presumed too much of myself..."

"And now, it seems the inevitable has happened..."

"Against all odds, I must have been so careless, and now it seems that—"

Switchblade was unable to live with his silence any longer, so he let out the breath he was holding, gasping so furiously that Starscream couldn't help but turn her focus to him. "Megatronus has escaped!" He belted out his peace from the depths of his quivering spark, as if he expected it to be seized by fits of anguish and suddenly die at any moment: that triplet of words, related with all the emotion of a dying breath, was the result of his supernova's last desperate scream into the infinite universe. Shockwave seemed in sync with the cosmic weight of Switchblade's confession, because he dithered and went silent. 

Starscream, of course, was not surprised, and she didn't see any need to pretend to be. By holding a stern and leadenly face, she could compensate for the seismic relief and triumph that overflowed her banks. Those dull, dry, ostentatious idiots! They were so concerned about their own reputations, the insolubility of their papery plans, that they didn't suspect a thing! Though she sustained her farcical sneer, she couldn't help but cast a shadow of smugness onto what she said next:

"The chained-up beast? Huh. What, did he get up and unlock them himself, or something?" 

"This is no occasion for jokes," Shockwave bristled. She could tell she'd struck a nerve with her easiness, and oh, how pleasant it was. "You know nothing of these beasts. You don't know the reason I lashed him in the first place. You hardly even know what a predacon is—"

"There's no need for insults," Switchblade snapped. The bile Shockwave sputtered flowed down like sweet, sugary nectar onto her glossa. 

"Megatronus is not like the others. I can let Quintus or Micronus roam because I know their nature, and they know theirs. I can let Onyx and Nexus free because they have half a mind to control themselves. I can even let Solus free, because she keeps the order, and cares too much about the others stepping out of line to think too critically about her own. But Megatronus—no, no, I cannot. It’s not only illogical, but horribly irresponsible. If I set him free I can’t say what he would do. I know his nature and so does he, but that’s because he forges it day by day, and makes his own place. He has half a mind to control himself, but he has even more to make his own rules. And he knows that none of the others would ever dare challenge him, or they would have taken him out while he was defenseless and dumb, yet he still lashes out and kills indiscriminately, without a moment’s notice, even though the battles ended long ago. He’s powerful enough, clever enough, and smart enough, and that’s what terrifies me. If he can get out of those chains, what else can he get out of?”

Starscream had to try her hardest not to collapse into a fit of wild laughter. The temptation was stronger every minute that he spoke. He seemed to notice her pursing her lips like she was holding back some dire secret, so already agitated as he was, he lashed forward with a stinging inquisition, striking her ankles like a whip: “What? What in the Pit is so funny to you?!”

“You are making such a big deal out of a beast who does nothing but lay around. I think that he’s just lazy.”

That word seemed to spear him right through his spark. Shockwave recoiled and clenched his fist, venom bubbling at the tips of his claws. “LAZY?!” he bellowed. Switchblade could tell there was no consoling him in this situation, so he respectfully turned his head away, as if he was at risk of viewing something scandalous. “YOU SEE A BEAST OF SUCH MAGNIFICENCE, WHO YOU OUGHT TO BE GRATEFUL EVEN EXISTS—WHO YOU OUGHT TO BE GRATEFUL IS EVEN ALLOWING YOU TO EXIST!—AND YOU HAVE THE GALL, THE RAW AUDACITY TO CALL SUCH A BEAUTIFUL, INTELLIGENT BEING LAZY?! ARE YOU EVEN HEARING YOURSELF SPEAK, YOU LOUSY WENCH?! I OUGHT TO HAVE LET HIM SLAUGHTER YOU!”

Starscream couldn’t contain herself—she was cackling ferociously. It was impossible to hear over his frenzied ranting, which was so unavailingly sonorous that it drew every eye on the ship towards them. Starscream could feel the attention of vehicons peeking around the walls and whispering behind port doors, and the fact that all their bashful gossip orbited that smug one-eyed scoundrel, and, for once, not her, was more cathartic than anything. She could listen to this song for hours.

His voice finally cracked and broke, and Switchblade took that opportunity to speak. “Please. That is enough.” Starscream wiped the fluid from her optics and struggled to sit upright as her frame bent and jiggled like it was a tower of jelly. Her chest ached, however pleasantly. Shockwave was only settled when Soundwave, stoic and knowing as he was, rested a thin, spidery hand on the cusp of his rotary blade, encasing it comfortingly, a gesture which seemed to snap him out of his predatory haze. Instead of being pale, his entire body glowed like energon, ultramarine and sizzling to the touch. 

“Alright. That is quite enough,” Starscream said. “As amusing as it was—“ a twitch of Shockwave’s optic, in the form of a shivery pulse, “—I’ll humor you. You think he’s too dangerous to be let out, hm?”

“Far too dangerous.”

“But you’ve made a mistake, and allowed him to escape.” 

He was caught like an animal in the wire cage of her bold-faced lie. Was he really at fault? She was almost starting to believe it herself. “Yes. I have,” he confessed sheepishly.

“For shame.” She giggled musically, perking her hips and popping her servos astride them. The convex arch of her thighs dazzled with lustful reflections of blue and purple light. “But there’s nothing we can do about that now. He’s free, and I guess we’ve got to live with it. Unless...”

“Unless..?”

“Well, you had to get him in chains in the first place, right? So, we can do it again. No biggie.”

“I think it’s more of a ‘biggie’ than you realize. He will fight back.”

“And? We can use the others. One against five, that’s totally unfair.” 

“No!” Shockwave snapped. “Never. I refuse to put them in danger. One of them could die.” 

“Ugh, you are impossible. What do you propose?”

“I think we should lure him out and then forcefully sedate him again.”

“What?! One of US could die!”

“That’s a risk I’m willing to take.”

“Well, I’M not!”

“Please! We can compromise.” Even Switchblade seemed peeved about the bickering. He raised his voice like he was stating a command, but the tone was pleading. “We can do it safely and ambush him. Starscream, Soundwave and I can fly—we can send a few vehicons to tempt him if we must. We’ll figure something out.”

Though they looked at each other meaning daggers, Starscream and Shockwave couldn’t find any issue with that (aside from everything, but that was expected), so they turned their heads away to concede.

“Very well,” Starscream huffed.

“That will work,” Shockwave crackled.

“I’ll go with Shockwave to procure the sedatives,” Switchblade offered, not because he had any particular interest, but because he wanted to get those two as far away from eachother as possible. Starscream had no problem with that, and Shockwave neither. 

Watching them leave, Starscream turned her body to start collecting her squadron of doomed Vehicons, only to be stopped as her chest met a hard wall. She stumbled away dazedly and shot up to see what had unexpectedly blocked her path.

Soundwave towered stoically over her. He was an odd mech. Fashioned so particularly as if he was a sculpture of glasswork, his fractured arms hung delicately at his sides, so thin it seemed like they should snap in half at the slightest pressure. He didn’t walk as much as he crawled, scuttling on spider legs wherever he went, sweeping the ground in tall, spindly, stygian shadows. Worst of all was his face, or the lack thereof: in place of where she had full lips and wide, curious optics, his expression was stolen by a flat screen, reflecting back to her the slowly souring image fixed on her visage. She stepped back again. It was hard not to feel intimidated in the face of what she could only describe was a window into death.

“What?” Starscream’s lips quivered into a sneer. As usual, he was silent. She had no logical idea where his optics were, if he even had them... still, yet, she felt them, as if her body was imagining sensations to account for the void her sight awned at. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

There was something knowing in his stance. His chest grew and detracted with breath as if even his existence was done deliberately, with an express purpose. He knew something, a wordless whisper drifting aimlessly in the stale nemesis air, captured through the precisely fragile tips of his precious claws. Or maybe he didn’t. After all, he was only standing.

“Don’t be like that,” she murmured. “What’s past is past. If we lose a few vehicons, then oh well, I deserve it. But surely, if you know the truth, you’d know why I did it. Unless you really are so shallow that you’d answer to a mech like Shockwave over me, just because he sings you a couple fawning praises.”

Silence. Starscream wasn’t sure if she believed what she was saying, but reading Soundwave was impossible. Perhaps that was how he wanted it. 

“Not a peep out of you,” she said, turning away from him. As she did, she couldn’t help but chuckle. “As if I even have to ask.”


	8. Chapter 8

It was hard not to feel nervous out here—after all, it was, essentially, the jungle. Though the heavy trees did not shudder with the weight of life, nor did the earth hum with impervious beasts, the air put special care into feeling lively, and the barren woodland was deceptively threatening. Though it was but a pale imitation, it did its job all the same; after all, there were foul, diabolical creatures prowling the sententious foliage, and, as far as Starscream cared to know, they didn't discriminate. Whether or not the forest was real, that didn't change the fact it was their territory, and under that dome, they were all equally caged.

The plan, Shockwave had asserted, was simple—on one side of the enclosure, a pod of vehicons was making their way through the growth, taking care to make as much noise as possible in hopes they might scare the predacons out of hiding. Usually, when one stirred, they all did, and when they were all out and about, things would get hectic; when that happened, Megatronus would certainly follow the cue, and then he'd hasten to attack the first vehicons he spotted. Between the noisemakers and the pod Starscream oversaw, which sat patiently sentinel at the other side of the dome, they'd have him cornered—after that, all they needed to do was get him to land and administer the tranquilizers. Casualties would be inevitable, but Starscream reassured herself by staying hidden in the brush, content to play supervisor while the show went on.

Shockwave was very particular about methods and behavior. They couldn't shoot at the predacons with real guns, and if one of them was to approach, the vehicons couldn't scatter: in the event a beast happened to descend, they would stand their ground and pump him full of tranqs until he keeled, because running was not only futile, but terribly ineffectual, he'd said. If it had been you, you would have scrambled as soon as you saw him, Starscream thought sneeringly at Shockwave, imagining his clinical optic flushing pink as the shadow of a beast absconded over him. She had rules, too—if her squadron got picked off and gobbled up, she would not interfere, because at least then there was a possibility that the predacon could swallow their sedative packs in the process (if she made a fool of herself, he would get distracted and go for her, and that wouldn't accomplish anything, would it?). There were plenty more instructions, but she'd given up listening midway through, because, she thought, if this idiot can't even figure out how to keep his own beasts, then I'm not obligated to listen. By this point she'd just about let the details of Megatronus' escape slip her mind, and she wasn't about to hurry to reclaim them. 

Soundwave and Shockwave would watch the whole scene, safely, from behind the glass window in the lab. That was typical of them. "I have to do everything here myself," Starscream growled under her breath, repositioning her heels in the rusty dirt and clutching her thighs for balance. Her wings splayed out between the branches of the bush, just barely obscured by the cluster of leaves. "All they do is watch. Watch and listen, and give out instructions like they own this blasted base. At least Soundwave is a pitiful mute—if he had things to say, I couldn't stand to hear them."

She listened for the rustle of the leaves. Every so often a vehicon would stumble and she'd hear the cracking of twigs from across the clearing, making her painfully aware of how deathly quiet it was. This place was so unnatural. It was as dead and gone as the rest of the moon, only masquerading in a lush woodland's wrinkled corpse. She could hear a breath gone askew in this suffocating vacancy. Several times, she thought she did.

For a fleeting moment, she felt like she'd crossed into a realm beyond the physical, something absent of the senses—that is, if she ignored the tumbling itch in her rotary blades, which came hand in hand with her crumpled posture. The silence and the unnatural lack of smell juxtaposed with the veneer of liveliness created a strange middle realm, a liaison between the worlds of the real and the dead. It was an odd thought, but in her head, it made sense, in some ironic sort of way. After all, she was in a sort of liminal space, unaware of how her fate would trend. Her life was, quite possibly, at the mercy of how well this playful removal would go. The thought made her wish she had protested a little harder. Maybe if she had been a bit more steadfast, this wouldn't have happened. She could have left Shockwave to deal with his own mistake and saved herself the trouble. Or was it her mistake? Could she really avoid this responsibility forever? Maybe this was all her fault, and it would always be her fault, and now she was suffering through the consequences. Or maybe it would be fine. Who could say? It was exhausting. 

Before she could sink further into her sensation-less stupor, a chorus of twigs snapping and branches cracking annexed the duplicitous silence, letting her know the incursion had begun. Starscream recoiled instinctively a little further back into the brush. Her excited curiosity and growing unease were grappling for dominance, so she only allowed her optics to slant through the thin, silver leaves. The sustained clatter from the other vehicons must have been fairly distant, but in the dead silence, even surrounded by all these inconvenient plants and other insulators, it was ear-splitting. She winced away from the dissonance, but the quiet that swallowed it again was almost worse.

Then, a vicious shriek; the incursion had finally begun. It was a bit more suddenly than she'd expected. From far off in the distance, a golden arrow torpedoed into the greenish sky, shattering the brittle boughs of leaning trees. A crown of twigs and thorns sashed his angular chest. Quintus, Starscream realized in a moment of unusual clarity. She was surprised at herself for remembering, frankly, since Shockwave's droning voice was next to impossible to slog through; but truthfully, who could forget the stunning luster of that ivory armor?

There was another scream from the edge of the enclosure. It was lower and throatier, a rolling curtain of gravelly bass. Her wingtips rose involuntarily, spurred by the tense vibrations underfoot. Onyx rose monstrously from the earth, shaking off a rainbow of dust and rocks, port belly blacker than black. From the other side, Quintus' gaunt body twisted into an arch, another scream spilling out of him. The violent, almost fearful reaction seemed to be spurred by the sight of Onyx, whose pinpoint wings loomed like a hungry reaper. The earth was shaking again.

Starscream's attention landed back on the vehicon squadron, whom she'd nearly forgotten. They looked antsy, and their darkened forms now stirred under the brush, likely antsy with the realization of just how unsightly large those predacons could be. Starscream herself nearly pitched over as the tremors overtook her, threatening to split the dry earth below. 

Suddenly, from maybe a hundred meters off, an eruption of magma-red plates appeared, sprouting like blossoms. The predacon had buried itself in grasses and leaves, so its emergence had a blooming quality: in full light, it dazzled, just like a bursting flower bulb, exploding in every direction with tendrils of fire. Nexus climbed into the sky, knocking a gush of wind towards her. That's too close. That's way too close, she thought, too terrified to speak it.  
By some miracle it hadn't spotted them, though the vehicons clearly shared her fear, as they coiled away like razor snakes. 

Another pair of wings was emerging from the earth, but that was less interesting to her now as Nexus gracefully ascended, meeting in the middle. Quintus was still twisted in the sky, frills poised threateningly, staring down the frightful Onyx. They looked wary of eachother. Beyond wary: Starscream realized that the foamy pillars spiraling out of their mouths were smoke, blackened and angry. They seemed ready to launch at eachother. Nexus was screaming at them in his sturdy tenor, mediating Quintus' grating highs and Onyx's brutal lows, but Starscream had no idea how long that would divert their attention, and when they would finally start fighting. What simple creatures, she mused, getting spooked by something so badly that they found the sudden urge to tear eachother to pieces. As darkly humorous as it was, the thought was awe-inspiring.

She didn't get to see, though, as something sharp and angular sped between the hovering beasts. It cut through the tense air like a blade, leaving a trail of wire behind, threading the sky's unbroken face. The sound of the aircraft was piercing, prompting the Predacons to catapult away in fear. They squalled furiously as the vapor trail it left behind billowed out into gossamer wisps. Starscream leaned forward and her optics widened: That was Switchblade, she mouthed. It was hard to believe that anyone could be so fearless, flirting with two agents of certain death, his flat, diamond surface cut by the blade of their stares. Primus, are they going to follow him? Switchblade, you moron! You're going to get yourself killed!

As he turned his face down and spun into a nosedive, the fourth Predacon flew over him, its wingspan barely rivaling his. Micronus wasn't yowling or crooning like the others, but his path was intentional, quickly closing the gap between himself and the nearest Onyx. Nexus hissed and bawled, continuously finding himself disregarded. Quintus whinnied and bucked, but it was clear he felt intimidated by the others, as Micronus had swiftly revealed a partiality to the stoic Onyx. 

The last Predacon's arrival came in the form of a baleful shudder, quivering tremors which once again wracked the earth underfoot. Starscream didn't even try to balance on her dainty little heels and toppled onto her aft. She couldn't see the lake, but in her mind's eye, she could imagine the brilliant body of Solus leaping free from the depths, throwing waves of crystal blue water onto the muddy shores. Her optics turned upward, captivated as the liquid body of the night sky spread her arms out to swallow the day. The other Predacons sauntered back in the sky. Her cry was shattering, ringing out from every bowed edge of the enclosure, powerful and angry. They had all woken from the outpouring of noise, and they all seemed very agitated. 

Well, that was all but one. There was once again a critical absence. Where is Megatronus? The eager crowing should have certainly been enough to spur him, but it had been a few short minutes since the vehicons had first started clanging, and still, there was nothing. Vicious indeed, she wanted to puff and laugh. These beasts are going to rip each other to pieces before he shows his sorry aft.

She wondered if he was going to surface soon. Or ever. Her encounter with him seemed like a far-off dream. Perhaps she'd imagined it entirely. After all, the last part hardly seemed real, what when he'd finally stepped free from his shackles and showed himself to her. The piercing orange optics took on a new context pinned above that toothy smile, posing next to rows of pointed denta. His helm was angled forward dangerously, bringing all the features of his face together in a hawklike arc. His chest was decorated in deep gashes and dents. The servos that lashed her were glittered in scars. Saving his size and abnormal strength, in bipedal form, he seemed shockingly familiar. He seemed so much like other “regular” mechs that it was baffling. Starscream wasn’t sure what she expected, but he exceeded those perceptions.

Back in the present, Solus bellowed, shaking her ruff and charging at the other three. There was nowhere to look but up. They moved so effortlessly in the sky, almost as if they were walking though the thick air rather than flying. Onyx and Micronus twirled away as she dashed between them, wings flaring to cease the current of air beneath her. Quintus and Nexus lowered respectfully, though the former was still hissing and spitting up a diatribe of hate. Solus was far from finished.

Wheeling away, Solus suddenly bent back like a band and ricocheted, hurtling frightfully towards her scrambling inferiors. Her wings acted like blades, slicing between them, forcing their writhing bodies away. Every time she cut through them their distance grew, and that seemed to be her intention. She’s herding them, Starscream realized. Fascinated, she stared as the Predacon flew in concentric circles around the beryl sky, interrupting the grand beasts’ brilliant tantrum. It was like watching a choreographed dance routine. The squabble was, somehow, beautiful. 

As she stared, entranced by the colorful scene, something groaned underfoot. Starscream was nearly thrown out of balance again. Her optics widened with realization as she wildly tore them free, scouring the lush growth. Branches were quivering madly. Leaves and grasses bowed to salute a rising King. The vehicons scrambled again, grabbing for their weapons. The air was suddenly heavier than anything.

In the distance, cropping up above the trees, the rocky face of the mountain loomed dangerously. Slowly, a shadow had begun to emerge from its mouth, like a lashing tongue of impending doom.


	9. Chapter 9

The brutal roar that precipitated down from the mountain slid coldly through the trees, splattering on their shoulders. 

Starscream's wings perked up without her knowledge, quivering eagerly. It was a voluminous sound. The low, rolling crescendo of his bottomless throat speared through the vehicons one by one: she watched them stiffen up, impaled like some unfortunate mech-kebab. Unlike them, though, instead of paling, her face flushed an eager blue. For some reason, perhaps a fascination with the predacons' captivating display, she was actually excited for the inevitable chaos.

Starscream couldn't see much, but her limited vision yielded an impressive sight. Crawling forth like a tyrannical harbinger of Armageddon, the heavy form of Megatronus slid free from the teeth of the mountain, wings extended. He was a lot larger than she remembered. Casting a waterfall of liquid darkness tumbling down the mountainside, the reaper chose, instead of leaping forth and taking flight, to glide down beyond the rocky lips, sending stones and sand flying from his pads. He cast his wings out parallel to the earth and leaped once again, this time catching the wind and gliding through the air. Then, as if it were never there to begin with, the shadow of his being vanished beneath the treeline, a withering spirit.

Starscream's optics widened. Everything else had gone still. Even the predacons in the sky were dutifully silent: from her periphery, she could see that they were just as fixated on the rift where he'd slipped into nonexistence, waiting for the fabric to open up again with bated breath. Oh, how bated it was. 

Then, so immediately that he really could have just popped back into existence, a cracked and violent scream wracked the far side of the dome. The canopy split apart uproariously, spitting up the form of Megatronus' arrowed body. He had two of the vehicon troupe clasped in his hind claws, one for each palm. With a pulse of his wings, his paws tightened, and the mechs' writhing bodies were popped, spraying crescent arcs of energon onto the ground below. The crystalline droplets were reciprocated by a volley of needled projectiles, burying themselves in his hide. Those darts were full of the highest level sedative they had on hand. Two dozen shots later and he hadn't even flinched.

Like folding origami, his wings abruptly pinched back downward and he began a fantastic swan-dive into the trees. More darts raced to fight him off, but it was no use; as soon as he broke the tepid surface, he was unstoppable. He soon re-emerged with another mech hanging from his jaws, dangling like a toy. This one's rupture was much more violent, and Starscream watched in terrified awe as mechanical parts shot off in every direction, energon spouting from the bottomless pit of Megatron's gullet. 

The other predacons were back to being excited again. Quintus, sensing an opportunity, disappeared into the growth to hide. Nexus lowered himself to be level with the treeline, and Onyx and Micronus joined eachother in flying towards the commotion, not looking particularly hungry for chaos, instead motivated with the instinctual fervor of regular hunger. Solus was the only one who stayed put. Her hackles were higher than before, and in this light, her frills were luminescent, a clear warning to the new creature spreading bodies on her domain. Starscream could immediately sense the tension between them.

Megatronus soared past the rain of tranquilizer bullets battering his flank. Solus screeched at him. She stuck her chest out threateningly and made to guard him from passing, as if she could block him out of the sky. Her domination was admirable. He didn't take offense, pulling his massive arms into the air and reciprocating her deadlocked stare. Her denta gnashed, flinging strands of spittle into the sky.

Amazing. Starscream watched with pinched brows and a dumbfounded gape. Maybe this was the thrill Shockwave found from watching them, she wondered. Each twitch of their tanked bodices was precise, and seemed to evoke a strong reaction in the other, twitching maws, vile hisses, and crackling tail twirls. Suddenly, Solus catapulted forward, arching like a boomerang and sizzling through the sky. 

Fwip! She snapped past his stomach. He folded his body around hers and threaded it like a noose. Disentangling himself, his powerful haunches guided the forward thrust of his pulsing chassis. Solus wound like the gears of a clock, arching spines forming perfectly segmented teeth as they shot into the air, instantly articulating her precisely circular limbs. Megatronus coiled and sharpened his guillotine wings. And then...

CHNK! CHNK CHNK! Suddenly, a symphonic chorus of small, singing darts rained onto the both of them, cruel angels from above. Their place of origin, four arrowhead jets, minuscule compared to the grand scale of their airlocked opponents, scissored through the paper-thin locks of the vaporous sky. The rain hit Megatronus first, and he grunted, careening gracefully away from the stinging shower. Solus was less courteous. When the first wave of needles pierced her flank she shrieked viciously, writhing in an effort to shake away the onslaught of more, all the while glaring spiteful daggers at her foe. His comparatively calm, prepared demeanor seemed to infuriate her. 

Starscream had to tear her gaze away for a moment when movement breached the corner of her fixed optics. The vehicons perforating the undergrowth started to advance, mutating into a bubbling cyst. Starscream's optics widened as she saw the outlines of their tranquilizer guns and realized what was about to happen. Who signaled the second phase? Did they even see what happened to that last group?? Oh Primus, they're going to get shredded—and I'm within swiping distance!

"Hey!" she barked, popping her helm out of the bush. They were nearly out of her sight by the time she did, leaning over branches in a meaningless effort to catch them. "Stop it! You're going to get us all killed!"

Above Solus' screeching, they were inconsolable. Starscream helplessly watched as they marched towards their dooms, shrinking away into the growth while the vultures circled overhead. 

***

Electric blue spittle flung out from Solus' gnashing maw. Sour energon from her last meal clung to the brutal curves of her denta. She had a tough, hardy snout with scythelike ridges adorning the tip of her nose; below the midline of her jaw, she sported a pointed chin, her cracked lips arching back around blue gums, revealing the lashing figure of her glossa. Her beast mode was furious, far from the feminine, fragile physique of her namesake. Truthfully, she was almost parodic. It was hard to imagine her falling victim to any mech's cannon, let alone the devilish charm of their wit.

"You dare to show your face here, Megatronus?!" she bellowed. Her wings sliced long, arching scars into the tapestry of the sky. "You've been shown your place. After that embarrassment, I'm surprised you didn't just die."

"If only it were so simple." Megatronus patterned his reply with coldness. His gaze flittered to the edge of her, towards the undisturbed trees. He knew there were more of the little parasites waiting for him, but they were being coy, content to watch like little insects until the opportunity emerged, an open wound fit for rapid decay. Solus was a scab, in that regard. She kept them at bay, but he found it irresistible to pick.

"Arrogant, patronizing scrap-heap!" She churned as she bellowed, spitting out wisps of black fog like a smokestack. She was a factory for fury. "Look at what you've done. I know you're responsible for this—now, everybody's excited, and I'm going to have to clean up this mess. They left us alone before you woke up!"

"I didn't 'wake up,' I was woken." She engaged him in tight, bitter circles, not backing down, but neither provoking. He could tell by the flash in her optics that she was waiting for an excuse to use those thick, bladed denta, and he refused to give it to her. His business wasn't with her, as much as she wanted it to be. He found it ironic that she was so infuriated when he entered her self-proclaimed "territory," but firmly refused the offer to let him leave.

"Then why don't I reverse that for you? I'll put you to sleep—permanently."

"Solus, I don't need anything from you."

"Aside from my mercy!"

"If this is about the little pests, I will flush them out—you just have to let me through."

"It's about more than the pests! I'm talking about your disrespect!"

"This is tiresome. And for what? A plot of land ordained so graciously to you by Shockwave?"

"Do not say his name!" She snapped her snout open and exhaled a massive gust of flames. Megatronus twirled and flung up his wings, feeling the hot tongue slather a saliva of char over the scarred metal, drenching him in toxic fumes. He spiraled out of the way and flew lower, taking this as his opportunity to escape. From the corners of his optics, he saw her massive, rage-swelled chassis—he knew she would be much harder to shake than that, but perhaps, in his evasion, he would be able to pick off the last of the few vehicons before she caught up, and retire to the undergrowth before she became too irrational. If he had to fight her off later, he would, but right now he had bigger—well, actually, much smaller—robo-minnows to fry.

To speak of the devil, as soon as his chest grazed the fluffy treetops a volley of darts suddenly exploded from below. A few hit his neck and shoulders, but he wrenched out of the way before any more could fix on him. Solus was not so lucky, and he heard her shriek as they came to graze her armor. It was a bad idea to draw the attention of two predacons, he thought, unable to help but smile through his clenched maw. He circled back around to the spot he'd seen their frenzied projectiles fly up from, ready to charge. 

Solus beat him to it. She snapped forward like the arrow from a bowstring and tore the trees apart, revealing a bed full of the pitiful creatures, scrambling away from the judgment of her claws. Instantly, two of them disappeared in her crushing clasp. She slammed their bodies together and ground their crumpled figures, sparks dashing out beneath the creases of their crushed armor plates. Energon and bits of wiring exploded from them as they popped like balloons. 

Not one to stay out of it, he followed the remaining vehicons with his predatory sneer. They were quick to rush off, hoping to find solace in the thick growth. Not for long, Megatronus thought with a smile. Through the hole in the canopy Solus wreaked he shot forward with the force of a typhoon, grabbing one of the fleeing creatures in his jaws and feeling their soft frame disintegrate. He landed on his paws in the dust and rusted grass, petrifying those who dared to look back at him.

But he wasn't the one they needed to fear. Like the apparition of a reaper, Solus burst through the canopy and pounced on the collecting crowd. She caught those remaining beneath her and flattened them in an instant, spraying more indiscriminate gore in every direction. Her legs, resembling extending serpents, shot forward. The insects were trapped as if in a net, immediately flayed in her claws. The ones that managed to escape readied their guns, but he could tell it wouldn't be enough. Solus was a machine. Nothing could stop her once she got going, and while he didn't doubt he could handle her, he much preferred when her energy was weaponized for him than against.

While she shredded, he spat, leaping at the group of stragglers. They hit him with a wall of darts, some bending and dropping at his chest, others managing to stick between the plates of his neck. Megatronus took in a deep breath, letting the nitrous air swell his lungs before suddenly exhaling—within his chest, a spark of flint struck and ignited, and from the cavernous depths expelled the demonic apparition, a slithering creature formed of flames. It opened a flickering maw and swallowed the oncoming rain, its force sending them flying backward. 

Solus caught up the slack where he had left off and swallowed the now blackened bodies. She was ravenous, and the pitiful creatures disappeared into her gullet one after the other, leaving behind only traces of their quivering, frightful frames. Megatronus almost started to feel fondly of her company. When her malice and foul intent wasn't directed inward she was a worthy companion in battle, which was all he asked from another Predacon. Good conversation or thoughtful introspection was never a requirement for his companionship. He was more than comfortable lashing his tail with fervently vicious abandon, slicing fleeing Vehicons with fragile frames into tightly diced pieces, observing silently while Solus doled out her inconsiderate punishment. Hoping to snap another straggler in his jaws, he swung his helm around, leering out at the edges of the clearing.

Before he could drag his optics away, they snagged on something small and pointed, bringing him to an immediate stop. As he passed over the undergrowth, a pair of wide, frightened optics stared frightfully up at him.

Those round pillars of light were unlike the cold, unfeeling visors of the vehicon scum. They gaped up vulnerably at him, seeming to drain of color when they met his vulgar stare, morphing from proud red to a bashful, trembling, virginal pink. They attached to the soft, curved face of a familiar figure, with lips so gently parted around the trembling form of a wordless whimper, beset atop the delicately cabled neck and perky little chest, framed by the carefully hidden silhouettes of two lowered sets of wings. Megatronus had familiarized her in an instant, and she to him—even though she was halfway inside the foliage, practically invisible, he could still see her clearly by the light of her own optics, and because her figure was practically ingrained into his sleazy memory. 

And he was not the only one who had seen her.

Like before, Solus stepped in front of his frozen chassis, breathing out heavy curls of smoke and soot. His momentary lapse had fully directed her away from the carnage of the vehicons, now seeing her direct, frightful stare targeted on the spot of the brush Starscream occupied. Saliva leaked from her hungry, lustful maw. The expression in her optics was wild. Megatronus felt the claws of something unfamiliar squeeze his spark, and for the moment, he was unable to do anything but watch while she stalked forward, her frills enormous, growling so loudly she might split the earth.

Solus couldn't hold herself any longer. She lunged.

Megatronus had to react quickly. His pedes carried him before any other part of his body was calibrated, throwing his weight at her, aiming first and foremost to the intentional shape of her chest. As she scraped the bush he tackled Solus, bodying her firm, intentional shoulders. The force of the impact was enough to jolt him, but he didn't let that quell his purposeful momentum. Solus staggered free and screeched at him. Starscream, meanwhile, scrambled away even further, backing herself against a tree trunk. Megatron subconsciously took a stance in front of her.

"What are you doing?!" Solus screamed. 

"You impudent fool!" was all he managed back.

Solus made another pass, but Megatronus was unfazed, swiftly leaping to the arch of her claws and forcing it backward. Around them, the living vehicons had regrouped—they really did multiply like pests!—and started to shoot again, peppering them with darts, given a clear shot in the open clearing. Megatronus knew he didn't have time to care, but he was getting tired. So tired.

Solus howled again, but the sound was warbled, eventually cracking entirely as her pedes pitched and heaved beneath her. She staggered forward with the intent to strike again, but she was clearly too weak: instead of taking another step forward, she lost her balance and fell flat on the earth, immobile. Megatronus staggered away from her. He struggled to hold on to his ounce of consciousness, but he was starting to feel the tranquilizer effects compounding, turning his vision into a kaleidoscope of greens and rust oranges.

As his legs gave way, he threw his gaze back one last time, crashing to a ground bound kneel. From behind, he saw the form of Starscream materialize, the purest thing in his view. 

She was looking at him.


	10. Chapter 10

"Starscream!"

The seeker queen was snapped out of her stupor as the sound of Switchblade's voice pierced the now quiet air, accented by the frantic hum of thrusters. Behind the collapsed form of the two Predacons the figure of a flat Cybertronian jet hugged the earth, kicking up clumps of dirt and plant matter with the blast of its engines, hovering for a moment before finally slipping out of gear and landing with a definitive CRUNCH! on the earth. Switchblade emerged from the mess of plates and panels, racing fanatically towards her. She flinched away instinctively, but he arrived at her before then, crashing into her with an unexpected sweeping hug and a tight squeeze. His ability to sweep her off his pedes was never previously established, so she was able to do nothing but squeak in surprise while he clung, ensuring her delicate safety. 

"Switchblade—" she managed to gasp. "Switchblade! Cut it out—you're going to crush me!"

While she flailed, she spotted, behind him, the sturdy figure of Shockwave, and the spindly specter of his ghostly companion immediately behind. Shockwave didn't look at them, drawn instead to the unconscious beasts sprawled below, stirring in their sluggish, unnatural slumber. When he reached Solus, he fell directly to his knees, bowing overtop her unnaturally flayed limbs.

Switchblade finally released, dropping her back on the ground. Starscream struggled to reorient herself and scowled at him. What had gotten into him? She brushed herself off pointedly, like he'd left some sort of dirt or grime on her scratched plates, appointing her gaze back on Shockwave. He stood away from Solus and had moved on to the second, much more mystifying Predacon—unlike with her, however, whom he'd felt comfortable resting his servos upon, he kept a warding distance from the slumbering beast. Starscream frowned and scoffed.

"I apologize, my liege," Switchblade finally spoke, his voice returning to its regular flat affect. "You were in imminent danger, from what I'd gathered—I was fearing the worst."

"Well, I handled it, didn't I?" she snarled, gesturing at the unconscious beasts. He didn't have an edgewise word for that. 

Behind him, Shockwave rose again. "Handled indeed. That could have gone much more smoothly."

Starscream felt a frantic rage bubbling in her gut. The freezing terror had formerly suppressed it, but his smugly calculating tone threatened to spill her over. "Could have? This was your idea!"

"If you had held off the second squad a little bit longer..."

"If I had—?! I didn't have any say in this! They went off by themselves! If anything, it was your fault for not giving them better instructions!"

"MY fault?"

She balled her servos into fists and exhaled a quaky seethe. "If you're going to take responsibility, then you can't shoulder off the blame when your stupid plan goes wrong, again! YOU didn't chain him up properly, YOU came up with this stupid idea, and YOU were the one that fragged it up! I'm sick of all your retroactive excuses!"

"I am operating with the aid of logical data. It is not my fault that one of the confounding variables was your incompetence."

"Do you even listen to yourself?! You dreamed up a ridiculous scheme. It almost got us all killed. I was nearly eaten because you can't keep your stupid pest problem in order!"

Shockwave started to bristle. The little antennae on the sides of his helm stood up and quivered. "Maybe this wouldn't be such a problem if you weren't so disrespectful!"

"Me? DISRESPECTFUL?! I'm sorry, but my respect is reserved for the people who have earned it, and not ungrateful, whiny, self-obsessed MORONS like YOU!"

"Shockwave, please. Your predacons..." Switchblade tried to intervene.

"How does ANYBODY on this moon tolerate you? You're irrational, you refuse to listen, and you're an obnoxious little glitch!"

"Are your audials impaired?! Does your processor register the things you say?! You are a miserable hypocrite! I would laugh if you hadn't just tried to get me killed!"

"It's no wonder Jetfire went insane! If I was your conjux, I'd do the same!"

Starscream's faceplate suddenly flashed an impossibly bright shade of blue. "And wouldn't you love to be! Perverted sleaze! Don't pretend I don't know what you say about me to other mechs, you miserable, lonely, debauched spawn of a glitch!"

"Don't flatter yourself, Starscream—"

"Flatter myself? Why would I need to when you already do it for me? After all, you're right—I am just a stupid, pretty little fembot who would swap fuel anybody that asked! I'm so cute when I just shut up!"

"ENOUGH!" Switchblade unexpectedly barked. Shockwave yanked his stare away, and Starscream jumped, skittishly clicking her wings. Her first lieutenant regained his original, causal composure, taking a deep breath.

"My liege, I don't think it is worth it to engage with such nonsense. Shockwave has to restrain the Predacon again, anyway. Why don't we...?"

"Return to our duties. Yes." She drawled to complete his sentence. "As much as it pains me to admit, you're correct. And you—" Starscream pointed to the cyclopsed menace, "—have a lot of work to do."

"Yes. I'm well aware." 

"And..." she paused, "I want you to show me how it's done."

There was another pause between the other two mechs. Soundwave, who had virtually blended in the background, observed with a quiet poise, as always.

"Excuse me? Teach you..?" Shockwave hesitated to continue, glaring at her flatly.

"Yes. Since I seem to be doing everything wrong with your Predacons, I thought it would be a good idea if you taught me. After all, how can I mess up if I'm learning from the best?"

"I... well, yes, that is true. It would be... beneficial." She seemed to have caught him off-guard with that one. "But you do know that means you will have to... listen to me, right?"

"Oh, however will I manage?" She swooned melodramatically. The back of her servo flew up to her helm and shielded the crest of her optics. "My poor, fragile, dainty little feminine ego! Woe is me!"

"Yes, Starscream, I hear you," Shockwave heaved. "Very well then. You can stay."

"I didn't need your permission." She smirked chirpily at him. "But I appreciate it. Thank you." 

At that, she dismissed Soundwave and Switchblade, waiting for Shockwave to direct his temporarily granted minions to their new stations. The vehicons were rightly a little bit disquieted, having watched their comrades be turned to ribbons of scrap metal and hydraulics by those same slumbering creatures just kliks before. Switchblade seemed hesitant as well, lingering off to the side, refusing to depart until Starscream shooed him. His demeanor had been a little odd lately, she couldn't help noticing. He was a lot more... "animated" than usual. But hey, that wasn't her problem—unless he tried to pull more stunts like that in the future. She was discriminate with who she let touch her, contrary to popular belief.

The vehicons worked cautiously. They began by loading the predacon onto a wide airborne stretcher, something that sounded a lot simpler than it was. Once sprawled atop the membranous cloth, Megatronus was wrapped in flexible metal coils and secured there, his limbs at his sides and his jaws snapped shut. 

All the while, Starscream pondered over her odd encounters with the beast. What a strange creature. His outward brutality seemed unquestionable, but his decision to save her was a very decidedly non-brutal act... Primus, did she really feel so romantically about it? "Megatronus, the Rescuer" didn't exactly have a pleasant ring to it. But what other word could she use? If he hadn't intervened, Solus very well would have snapped her in half. 

That was probably the thing that confused her the most. Shockwave had given her the impression that his predacons were savage creatures, another cybernetic species short of sentience like cougaraiders or hyenabots. He'd talked about them as if they were incapable of separating basic instincts from higher thought, and she'd assumed that to be true... but was it, really? 

Megatronus' optics were not the optics of a cougaraider. When he looked at her, she saw a contemplative mech, with thoughts and processes extending far beyond his next meal. After all, if he was just hungry, he would have eaten her when he first got the chance—but he didn't then, and he hadn't now. When he saw her there before Solus struck, cowering in fear in the undergrowth, she'd watched his expression shift, and the fear in her gaze was suddenly reflected... certainly, a mindless beast couldn't be capable of empathy, could it? That seemed impossible. And that wasn't even regarding the warwhale in the room—his other form, the one he'd shown her before escaping. That was not an animal trait. 

Starscream looked back at Shockwave. He was watching studiously as the stretcher was heaved into the air, ready to transport Megatronus to wherever he needed to end up next. She sidled up to the scientist with sweeping steps, clearing her throat to announce her presence. 

"So." She flicked her wings. "What are you doing right now?"

"The sedatives will keep him for a time, but they aren't a catch-all. There's still a possibility—a very real one, in fact—that Megatronus will wake up during the transportation process, and, in that case, he needs to be fully restrained. Restraining them is helpful in stressful situations, as it will help them calm down."

"Calm down? If I woke up and I was tied up, I'd be pretty freaked out." Starscream tapped her digits together.

"Well, you aren't a predacon," he countered. She huffed irritably.

"So... when they're freaked out, wrap 'em up. Got it."

"It's not that simple."

"Then what is it?" Starscream was starting to remember why she didn't ask him things. 

"If you were to ever find yourself in a situation with an agitated predacon, the logical thing to do would be to show you're not a threat. Back away and get as low to the ground as possible, make sure all your limbs are in view, and don't make any sudden noises. If you don't have the means to subdue them, your best bet is to show them you mean no harm."

"Great. So, if you do that, they'll leave you alone?"

"Potentially."

"Potentially?! What does that mean?"

"Well, predacons are violent creatures. There is no guarantee that if you do all those things, they won't attack you. They're just slightly less likely to."

"Oh, fantastic. So if I do all that, there's still only a two-in-three chance that I won't get mauled."

"If we're talking in terms of statistics, I'd place that number much closer to two-in-four."

"Even worse!"

"But that's in a situation where you're vulnerable. Although it's inevitable that you'll be vulnerable to them at some point, I've worked tirelessly to minimize that possibility. Though they're easy to excite now, once they're settled into their new territory, all the rigorous training they went through will shine through, and they'll be primed to learn new commands."

"How do you train a predacon?"

"Well, that depends on the behavior. For low risk habits, you can entice them to behave with food and other rewards. But when you want to develop long-lasting obedience and combat habits, you have to earn their respect."

"And how does that work?"

"Discipline." His optic flashed. "The best way to show anything that you're in charge."

"And you do that by...?"

"Well, the classic symbols are whips and chains, but logically, an electric shock is more effective."

"Of course you'd know all about that..." she grumbled under her breath. "So, you abuse them, basically?"

"It's not abuse. It's a matter of respect. If you show them that you're in control, they'll learn how to react and adapt. They do it to eachother—you're just inserting yourself in the hierarchy... and showing them not to mess with you."

"Right." She couldn't help but feel a little odd about that prospect. She didn't "discipline" her soldiers, after all. But, of course, predacons weren't soldiers. “I have another question.”

“What is that?” They had started walking, following the movement of the vehicons carefully lifting Megatronus above the trees. She followed, considering carefully how she would word it. He was only half-interested, presenting an aura of coolness.

“If they are so savage, why do predacons have bipedal alts capable of speech?” 

He stumbled like he’d tripped on something, stopping so suddenly she nearly walked into him. She put her servos up defensively.

“How did you know about that?” Shockwave inquired. She wasn’t expecting his response to be so aggressive. 

“I... well, I have read,” she stammered. “Some... things...”

He didn’t seem entirely satisfied with her answer, but thankfully, he didn’t push it. “I’ve told you this before, but just because they are aggressive and prone to predatory behaviors, that doesn’t make them unintelligent. They are very clever beasts. Their natural inclination to violence is what makes them resort to their beast modes so frequently, unlike you and I.”

“So you could have intelligent congregations with a predacon, just like you can with other mechs?”

“Well, yes, you can have conversations.” 

She raised an optic ridge and interrogated him flatly: “have you ever tried?”

Shockwave scoffed like her question was preposterous. He folded his arms and continued walking. “Of course. I’ve spoken with them quite frequently, after spending so much time around them. They are fascinating creatures, but certainly not at the same level of comprehension as we are. They are quite irrational and emotionally driven, so it is difficult to have logical, objective interactions.”

“So you can talk to them? And they’ll talk back?”

“With limited success, yes.”

Starscream thought about it for a moment, then started snickering. Shockwave gave her a sideways glare, the pulse of his optic flickering as he heard her characteristic snort.

“What’s so funny?”

“I shouldn’t be surprised that you had to bring a race of cybernetic beasts back from the dead to have someone to talk to, you miserable spawn of a glitch.”

He clearly wasn’t as amused. He set his shoulders forward again and sneered. 

“I shouldn’t be surprised that you are an immature wretch, as always.”

“You are feeling quite bold today, sir.” She mimicked his signature drawl. “You’d best remember to apologize to your superior.”

He was clearly getting peeved again. He made a sound like he was gritting his audial plates together. “I am sorry, my liege.”

“That’s better. You’re lucky I’m a considerate, forgiving queen, Shockwave. If this was a predacon hierarchy, you’d have to be taught a lesson in respect.”

“You are suddenly very interested in predacon hierarchies,” he challenged. Another crooked glance was shot her way. This was the first time she remembered why it might not be a good idea to provoke him. She wasn’t out of the cyber-jungle yet, both metaphorically and literally speaking... one wrong move, one tiny slip-up, and there was still a chance he’d cotton onto the fact that she wasn’t so innocent in Megatronus’ “mysterious” escape, despite his density.

“What? You keep talking about them.”

“Earlier, you seemed bothered by their existence. I’m just curious to know what got you suddenly so fascinated in something I’m doing. You rarely ask me this many on-topic questions.”

“Well, it has nothing to do with you,” she spat. “If there was anyone else on this ship who knew as much about the blasted beasts I would turn to them in a sparkbeat, but as it stands, you’re my only outlet for these questions. Believe me, I am far from thrilled about it. If be expected to work with these creatures, I might as well get to know a few things.”

“It’s out of character for you. It seems strangely... logical.”

“Do you really think I’m that stubborn?!”

His optic narrowed.

“Don’t answer that. I don’t need your snide feedback; your voice agitates me.” 

“Of course, my liege.” The suspicion seemed to have fled from his expressionless face, flooding her with an involuntary shot of relief. 

In time, the two of them managed their way across the enclosure, approaching the artificial mountain. While it appeared authentic from a distance, upon drawing closer, it was easy to see the subtle imperfections and distinctly unnatural overlapping plates and creases forming the jagged terrain. Spires of metal glinted perfectly in the sun, devoid of the usual rust and well wear one would see back on Cybertron’s sprawling landscapes. She couldn’t help but notice that, at the very top, something stirred in the gaping cave on the cliff-face. Which predacon could that be, she wondered? Onyx? Micronus? 

Drawn from her contemplating, Starscream jumped as the slumbering body of Megatronus was lowered onto the ground. His hulking, slumbering figure struck the sloped earth with a powerful THUD! She momentarily feared that he might wake from the motion, but his body remained absolutely immobile, almost like he was dead. Was he dead? She shook the thought away; why did she even care?

Shockwave approached the sleeping creature. The vehicon jets settled to the ground, letting the stretcher suspenders unhook from their chassis as they transformed. Freed and fluttering in the air, the tarp unfurled, settling to the ground. Atop it. Megatronus rested, still bound tightly with metal lashes. He didn’t exactly look so comfortable.”

“So... now what?” Starscream watched the vehicons transform again and fly off. Shockwave was careful around the beast, like he had been earlier. His steps were methodical and bordered on paranoid, treating the confined creature to a wide berth of space.

“These binds should be good enough to hold him from here on out. I was clearly too lax with my last arrangement... I won’t make that mistake again.”

“What? You’re just going to keep him like that??” The way he was tied up made her cringe. Those ropes practically sawed into his sides, done up so tightly they chafed his armor, in some cases digging into it. As amusing as the concept of a predacon sausage might have sounded, it certainly didn’t look humane.

“Not indefinitely. But clearly, he needs to calm down.”

“Whatever happened to what you said the first time I was here? ‘He’ll wake up when he wants to.’ Clearly, he wanted to!”

“It’s not so simple. Remember what I told you about respect, Starscream. He is a powerful beast that has earned respect, and I have given it to him, but he cannot be set free until he shows the same respect to me.”

“What respect? I don’t think it’s very respectful to chain him up like that! If someone did that to me, respect would be the last thing on my mind.”

“But you’re not a predacon,” Shockwave reminded her scoldingly. “Like I said, you earn their respect by showing them your authority. I have the power to keep him here, and until he learns that I am the one keeping him alive and he is indebted to me, I will leverage that power. It’s logical.”

“Megalomaniacal,” Starscream muttered. 

“You have a lot of protests, Starscream, for someone who hasn’t worked with predacons for as long as I have. Though I know it is in your nature to be assertive, I can assure you with full confidence that I know what I am talking about.”

“Forgive me for being skeptical, Shockwave, I just fail to see how this is supposed to make sense.”

“Then I will show it to you.” Right on time, as if summoned there by his speech, a pair of eradicon grounders approached, driving through the growth and skidding to a halt before reaching them. Upon transformation, Starscream watched them pick clods of organic matter out of their wheels. Their cockpits were the restful homes of two metal supply crates, which they lowered in tandem. Shockwave opened them up one after the other, revealing within, among other miscellaneous tools, a stack of energon cubes nestled together, some mysterious cylindrical apparatus, and a large, sharp, probe-like structure. None of the materials seemed especially friendly—they looked like much larger, much more unfriendly versions of the tools Starscream was used to seeing in the medbay. When Shockwave held his first one up—a cylindrical tube with a needle attached to the end, like a massive, bladed syringe—she winced away, as if he was about to aim that thing at her. He turned it over in his servos and removed the back end, grabbing a handful of the energon cubes and sliding them inside. Once it was full, he applied the lid, and she watched as the thin shells dissolved under pressure. The energon was a slightly higher grade than the stuff even Starscream usually used, as it glowed a calm, timid violet. 

“What is that for?” Starscream asked, sheepishly stepping around him. To her horror, he walked up to her, only to extend his arms, offering the strange tool to her.

“There’s nothing to be afraid of. It’s just a feeding device.”

“Feeding..?”

“Hold this for me, please.” He urged it closer, even as she winced away. Hesitant to accept that it wouldn’t hurt her, she slowly eased herself, taking the syringe in her palms. It was quite heavy.

“What are you going to do with this?”

“Feed him, of course.”

“What? How is this supposed to do that?”

“Just wait and watch, Starscream. This process should be very interesting to you. It will teach you a thing or two about interacting with predacons.”

He reached into the second crate and pulled out another equally, if not more, intimidating object. This one looked much more like some sort of blaster than a medical tool. He affixed it to his cannon arm via a series of bolts on the bottom.

“And what is that?”

“An electric shocker.”

He walked up to the sleeping Predacon. This was the closest he’d been to it since it had fallen, though he still carried some of his reserve, slowing down considerably once he came within a couple steps. After checking several of the closest bonds, he grabbed the side of its helm, turning the jagged snout onto its side to expose Megatronus’ plated neck. On his arm, the shocker suddenly booted up, sparking ecstatically to life. Starscream realized what Shockwave was doing just as the whining blue light spilled onto Megatronus’ sleeping form, and, with one swift movement, he jammed the tip into the base of his neck.

Tendrils of electricity blossomed out around the place of impact. The Predacon’s optics flew open abruptly as energy wracked his body.

Starscream involuntarily averted her gaze. Megatronus tried to open his jaws to roar or snarl, but the only thing that came out between the binds was a high pitched growl, warbling and painful. Freed from the confines of slumber, he suddenly found himself trapped in a whole new set of chains, and he started to struggle; Starscream watched the creature wriggle helplessly, straining his limbs, eventually resulting to throwing his weight as far as it went, raising and slamming his chest against the ground spontaneously. His tail was the only thing that moved, and it did so frantically, helplessly whipping back and forth and striking the ground with the force of a natural fault. 

Shockwave didn’t pull the electrical apparatus free, using his free servo to force the Predacon’s neck down so he couldn’t escape it. Starscream was able to see clearly as each new pulse of energy shot through him because the creases between his armor plates started glowing. His optics widened flashed full of fear and pain. Each new growl that escaped his throat grew louder and more desperate. 

“What in the pit are you doing?!” Starscream shouted over the pleading and crackling. It was only after hearing her did Shockwave finally seem to snap out of it, yanking his arm back as if propelled by the force of the bubbling energy. The shock gun let out a dying hiss before the light finally bled away, disappearing in a trail of smoke. The predacon’s aching yowl faded too, trickling into a strained pant. His optics remained wide and wild.

Shockwave turned back to her. He didn’t care to answer her question. “Come here,” he ordered. She didn’t feel incredibly safe after what she’d just witnessed, but that shock gun told her it was a better idea to listen. Starscream shuffled hurriedly to him and held out the syringe. He took it off her servos.

“Now hold him.”

“What?!”

“Put your servos on his neck like I did. You’re going to have to hold down his helm.”

“Are you crazy?! You’re going to shock him again!”

“This is important, Starscream. I need to feed him. There’s a very strong likelihood that he will protest, so I need you to restrain him for me. I won’t shock him unless it’s absolutely necessary.”

“What does that mean?!”

“Unless he tries to bite or becomes too unruly, I will not have to electrocute him. For the meantime, you need to hold him down.” 

She couldn’t even begin to list her objections to that idea, but between the Predacon and that gun, she wasn’t sure she wanted to. Seeing no other option, Starscream went to the spot Shockwave had once knelt, mimicking his squat, placing her servos on the predacon’s side for balance. His plates were still warm. He writhed under her grasp, and she felt his body twist and heave with each new shallow breath, the action evidently torturous. That shock must have been a very high voltage to get such a reaction out of this... thing...

Starscream held all the reluctance in the world, but slowly, as immediately as she could manage, she moved her palms to the back of his neck. The trail she took along his plates rubbed against his sharp spines, feeling them bristle and contract independently. Once her grip rested, she made the grave mistake of turning her optics down, meeting those wide, frightful optics.

As she looked at him, he did the same. The white ring around his scarlet pupil dilated, coming to rest on her. A swarm of emotions dashed amidst the rapidly flickering face of his gaze, emitting virtually odorous clouds of palpable fear. But even still, as she sensed it wanted to dart away wildly, his optic focused on her. As she placed her servos on his helm, she was unable to help but soften her grip, and she found her thumbs moving independently, circling his damaged, dirtied plates. Subtly, and so gently Shockwave was unable to see, she started to caress the beast, reminiscent of how she’d handled him the first time they’d met. She caught another flicker in his optics, but this one wasn’t frantic; rather, it seemed almost appreciative. As if it were possible, she could have sworn she felt his writhing slow.

Her direct view into Megatronus’ optic was interrupted by the blurred figure of Shockwave, coming to a kneel in front of his maw. He held the syringe at the ready, clutched firmly between his clawed digits. Starscream broke eye contact with Megatronus just long enough to watch as Shockwave jammed the needle part into his mouth,forcing it between the clenched denta in a way that was clearly painful. Starscream immediately felt Megatronus’ body start to excite again, and his momentarily calmed optics flared.

“You are so rough,” Starscream found herself hissing before she even processed it. Shockwave pushed the syringe in further and angled it upward, forcing his jaws open more, driving the metal bonds around his snout further into the soft protoform beneath

“You would be fond of that in any other context, my liege. Now hold his helm.”

“Excuse me?!” Starscream’s face flushed; a litany of choice words scrambled to fit on her sharp glossa, but the increasing fervor with which Megatronus thrashed indicated that a confrontation would have to wait, so she forced them to the back of her throat. She did as she was asked, moving the palm placed highest on his neck to rest between his horns and returning his state. As well as being pained, his expression was almost challenging, interrupted by a flash of distrust. The inquisitory nature of his face made her feel almost guilty. If I could protest, I would—I already have, for Prime’s sake, she wanted to reassure him. Rather than break their silence, she just started petting him again, drawing firmer swirls into his fluttering neck plates.

Their stare-off seemed to last for whole minutes. He stared deeply at her, and she the same. She could tell by the way his hydraulics contracted that he was uncomfortable and in pain; it was almost as if they shared some sort of psychic bond, implicit and unspoken, communicated through the potency of their stares and the intimacy of her touch. Starscream was once again struck by the profoundness of him, that same connection she’d noticed before, etched into the ridges of his face. Though his body protested, he grew still under her watchful gaze, calmed, or at least encouraged to be calm, by the attentive strokes. She almost forgot that Shockwave was there until he emptied the last few drops of energon into Megatronus’ mouth, whatever spare globs he couldn’t force down his throat dribbling between his fangs.

When he finally swallowed the last bit, Megatronus’ body relieved the tension it had been building. Starscream eased her firm rubbing and relaxed as well. She didn’t realize it, but a smile snuck its way onto her face, cheerful and reserved specifically for him. It was an indication of her gratitude, both for the fact that he hadn’t bitten her digits off, and for when he’d saved her life, a secret she knew in her spark was unspeakable. In his steadily dimming pupil, she saw the pain and fear ebb away too. 

“What are you doing?”

The mutual calm didn’t last long. Starscream was brought back to reality by Shockwave’s bitter snarl, fringed with disbelief and confusion. She severed the invisible cord tying her gaze to Megatronus’ and jerked away, hugging her servos to her chest.

Shockwave’s chest was heaving. He held the empty syringe limply at his side. The singular optic fronting his brutish face was wide and incredulous.

“What am I..? I—I was restraining the Predacon, like you asked!” Starscream knew that she’d done nothing wrong—she’d done a lot of things better than he had, even—but she still couldn’t help but feel embarrassed, once again like a punished sparkling, bashful and disgraced.

“Don’t play dumb. You were looking at him. Why were you looking at him like that?” The tone he used was extremely aggressive, to the point it was almost scary. She knew she couldn’t let him win. She was the boss here. She swallowed her fear and shot her wings up, fists clenched, jaw equally tight.

“What does it matter? I kept him calm while you fed him. It’s over now, and I did it right!”

“I didn’t ask you to—to start PETTING him—like some sort of—“

Before he could finish, and before Starscream could interrupt, they were both surprised by the sound of a vicious impact behind them, metal on dusted metal. Starscream turned to see that Megatronus was thrashing again, even more violently than before. His wings and legs strained against the bonds, chest expanding with breath, nearly doubling in size. Shockwave had to react quickly. He moved towards Megatronus with his electric gun at the ready, despite Starscream’s clear protests, dropping to his knees and pushing the predacon’s helm into the dirt.

Before he could shock him, however, Megatronus let out a long, warbled growl. It was far from the loudest, most intimidating, or most emotional sound he’d made that day—it was quite low, in fact, so much so that Starscream could barely hear it—but it froze Shockwave in his tracks, completely disregarding whatever his previous fixation had been. Starscream was completely flabbergasted when he freed his grasp.

“What’s going on? Did something happen?”

For a while, Shockwave was completely silent. Then, in a low, ominously foreboding growl, reduced chillingly to the volume of a whisper, he finally spoke:

“He said your name. He’s asking for you.”


End file.
